


Don't Explain

by rotaryphones



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Post Reichenbach, Season 2 spoilers, The Sign of Four
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-10
Updated: 2012-08-29
Packaged: 2017-11-01 18:21:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 45,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/359840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rotaryphones/pseuds/rotaryphones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three years later, John had a girlfriend, a new job, and a new life, and just because his ex wasn’t dead didn’t mean they were going to go right back to the way things used to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thank yous to my betas breathedout and thisprettywren. The chapter count on here is very tentative for now.

The front door was unlocked. Odd, because he and Mrs. Hudson were always meticulous about locking up behind them, ever since those American thugs broke in and scared her half to death.  
  
For a moment John tensed, and he thought of the gun tucked away in a drawer upstairs, out of reach. But that wasn’t his life anymore. There were no terrorists, no snipers, no assassins out to get him. That was three years ago, and he had to keep reminding himself that he didn’t need to be on guard. Mrs. Hudson must have stepped out. Locking the door must have slipped her mind.  
  
He walked up the stairs wondering what Sherlock would say about it if he were alive. Would he have detected a stranger’s fingerprints by sight? Would he smell a foreign scent on the doorjamb? Would he commend John for being observant, or berate him for missing everything of importance? John still thought about it occasionally, what Sherlock would say, what obscure details he would note, whether or not he would be impressed with John’s continuing resolution to be more aware of the world around him.  
  
There was a time, in the months following the death of his best friend and boyfriend and any other name you could put on it, when these thoughts were a constant torture. He could hardly make tea without feeling the nauseating void of Sherlock’s absence. But years had passed, and things had changed. He had a girlfriend whom he loved, a job that was satisfying if not thrilling, and on most days he was happy. Thinking about Sherlock was more of a comfort than a hardship; he liked to feel that he was keeping Sherlock’s memory alive. He even believed that doing so was his responsibility.  
  
So John happened to be thinking of Sherlock that day as he turned his key in the lock upstairs, placed his hand on the knob, and opened the door to his supposedly empty flat.  
  
Later, John would recall sensing another presence before actually seeing who it was. He would remember the split second in which his mind cycled through _burglar, Mary, Mycroft_. But at that moment, the only thing he was conscious of was the sensation of reality derailing. His vision tunneled, and his awareness narrowed down to the fact that he was staring into the very real face of Sherlock Holmes.  
  
Sherlock.  
  
Standing there, in his sitting room. Eyes and jaw and lips and hair and throat. Unquestionably, painfully _Sherlock_.  
  
Time, along with reality, disconnected completely, and John may have stood there staring for hours. Days. Decades. There was no way of knowing. He couldn’t think beyond Sherlock. Sherlock. Sherlock.  
  
“John.”  
  
Oh god, that voice he thought he’d never hear again, smooth and deep, but also soft and broken. It fractured the moment, time was restored, and suddenly there were too many thoughts crowding him, too many realizations. His knees buckled and he leaned back, gripping the doorknob behind him for support, his weight accidentally slamming the door shut with a bang. He was breathing hard and fast. His heart felt as though it wouldn’t survive the strain.  
  
And Sherlock— _god_ , Sherlock just stood there, alive, very much alive, though there were so many things about him that were jarringly wrong. His hair was short, far too short. His face was too thin. There was too much emotion in his eyes, staring at John with something like fear, guilt, hope, longing, and pain. And everything else about him was too _right_ , from his cheekbones down to his coat, too achingly familiar to make any sense.  
  
Sherlock took a step forward and John cowered back, unable to form words. Because if Sherlock was alive—and his brain was slow to accept that—then what did that mean? What did the last three years mean? Whom did John mourn? Reality, for the second time, started to swim out of focus.  
  
“John?”  
  
This time John could hear concern in Sherlock’s voice, and the world snapped back into place with greater clarity than ever. Everything, all of it, had been a lie. The years of grief had been nothing but deception. Something in John’s gut hardened into a rock. He focused on the one emotion out of thousands that he could immediately recognize and understand, and that was rage, rising like mercury, flooding his limbs and his thoughts. Sherlock was alive when he had absolutely no right to be. _Bastard_.  
  
John’s body hummed with tension as he finally stood up straight and lurched forward.  
  
“John, I—”  
  
John cut him off by slamming his fist into Sherlock’s face. His knuckles made contact with Sherlock’s cheek and the side of his nose. There was a loud crunch, but John hardly even felt the contact, watching with surprise as Sherlock reeled backward, blood spurting, the final proof that Sherlock was actually physically present and _alive_ and capable of being hurt. John followed after him as Sherlock staggered away, ready to land more blows just to feel that solid body break, but Sherlock held up his hands.  
  
“John, wait. Please.”  
  
It was the ‘please’ that broke through John’s fury, not because he felt sorry for what he’d done, but because that word had only ever come out of Sherlock’s mouth a handful of times and it automatically triggered John’s concern. He took a deep breath and paused for long enough to look down and take note of his aching fist. Shit. Then he looked up at Sherlock wiping the blood from his lip and pinching his nose. _Shit_.  
  
He grabbed Sherlock by the arm, hard, and dragged him to the bathroom, refusing to feel guilty for the way Sherlock flinched. After forcing him down onto the toilet, he batted his hands from his face and examined the damage. Sherlock went completely still. It took only a few prods to confirm that nothing was broken, and a bit of compression was enough to stanch the blood flow. Sherlock just needed to be cleaned off.  
  
John retrieved a flannel and ran it under the sink, then knelt down so he could bring it to Sherlock’s mouth and nose. He worked silently without thinking, because if he thought about it he might punch Sherlock again, or empty the contents of his stomach, or cry. He had to work especially hard to ignore Sherlock’s gaze, boring into him, unnervingly lost and confused. When had Sherlock become so easy to read? When did he begin wearing his emotions on his face? Certainly not when John had known him. This was someone new, then. A stranger.  
  
The flannel needed rinsing, and John pulled his hand back, but Sherlock, with lightning reflexes, grabbed his wrist.  
  
“Let me explain,” he said, and John could hear the start of a prepared speech that threatened to make him blind with anger. Did Sherlock honestly think he could return after three years, lay out his thin excuses, and be absolved? Because John was not going to let him clear his conscience so easily.  
  
“Don’t you dare, you fucking bastard,” he hissed.  
   
Sherlock looked down and quickly released his wrist. When John followed his gaze, he found that the hand holding the flannel had squeezed itself back into a tight fist, prepared to break Sherlock’s teeth in just to prevent him from _explaining_. He took a slow breath and relaxed his fingers, then stood again to reach the sink.  
  
At the sight of pink water circling down the drain, John found himself outside of Bart’s, sinking to the pavement, watching a pool of blood spreading around Sherlock’s skull. He shuddered, gasped, and steadied himself against the basin. No, focus on the task at hand.  
  
He lowered himself back to the floor, and worked like that for another few seconds, wiping the blood from Sherlock’s face, not saying a word. Not thinking. Then Sherlock parted his lips and sighed. And it suddenly occurred to John how intimate this was, how close he was to Sherlock’s mouth. How, without the flannel, he would again be feeling those soft lips under his fingertips, and he wondered if they would taste just as he remembered underneath the trace metallic tang of blood.  
  
Fuck. John dropped the flannel onto the ground as he stood and rushed from the bathroom. Those were definitely not thoughts he could afford to have, not when his emotions were all over the place and he couldn’t trust his own actions.  
  
Back in the sitting room, he sank into the leather chair and held his head in his hands. “Christ,” he whispered to the air. He couldn’t believe this was happening to him. Three years ago he would have given anything to have Sherlock back from the dead, but now it just felt wrong. Now it just _hurt_. Where had he been all this time, and why come back now, after so much fucking time had passed?  
  
John heard a rustle, and he looked up to find Sherlock standing off to the side, watching him uncertainly. Even though Sherlock’s face was discolored and there was dried blood caked around his nostrils, he still looked breathtakingly gorgeous. Fuck fuck fuck.  
  
They stared at each other for some time, and maybe Sherlock was waiting for John to speak, but John couldn’t think of a single word to say. So Sherlock broke the silence. “I’m sorry,” he said, slowly, as though he wasn’t sure the words would come out correctly.  
  
The sound of that voice and those rare words, such a simple reminder of what they once had, brought everything home. Everything they once were to each other, the things John had depended on Sherlock to provide in order to feel whole—the weight of it was overwhelming, suffocating. Oh god. John squeezed his eyes shut, pressed the heels of his palms against his lids, and used all of his willpower to keep tears from forming. Sherlock did _not_ deserve to see him cry.  
  
Eventually the wave of emotion passed, forced down into some dark corner of his mind, and John opened his eyes again. Sherlock was fingering the scarf at his neck as though itching to remove it, but he kept it on along with that damn coat. He took a deep breath. “There was a reason I couldn't—“  
  
“Shut up,” John interrupted in a surprisingly even tone. He refused to give Sherlock the satisfaction. “When I want to know why, I'll ask you. Until then, keep your fucking reasons to yourself.” He paused, realizing he'd been digging his nails into his thighs. Sherlock continued to watch him with that lost expression, his gaze occasionally straying around the room, no doubt gathering data. Not knowing where to begin, John decided to start with the basics. “I suppose you’ll want a place to stay? Or were you planning to run off again?”  
  
Sherlock blinked. “I’ll stay. If you don't mind.”  
  
He sounded almost afraid, and John could feel his resolve soften despite himself. He never knew he could feel so much simultaneous compassion and fury toward a single person. “I don’t mind. You can sleep in your old room.” _Our old room_ , he thought.  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
John frowned. Politeness on Sherlock never quite fit. But then, Sherlock wasn't even supposed to be here, being polite or rude or any of it. Sherlock wasn't supposed to be alive. There was still no way to swallow that knowledge without choking on the size of it.  
  
“Right,” said John, standing abruptly and turning his back on his undead ex-everything. He felt an unnatural calm descend on him. “I'm going out. You can help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge. Sorry that Mrs. Hudson binned most of your things.”  
  
“Where are you going?” Sherlock asked, as John reached for his jacket. That tone of surprise didn't fit him either.  
  
“My girlfriend’s,” John explained. He wondered how much Sherlock had deduced about his new life the moment John walked through the door. Possibly everything. “Her name is Mary. I'm staying with her tonight.”  
  
Anything was better than staying in this flat with a ghost from his past who was no longer a ghost. He needed distance, miles and miles of distance, if he wanted any chance of processing it at all.  
  
“One more thing,” he added from the doorway. “I know that I...that you...” He caught the icy blue of Sherlock’s gaze— _Sherlock, god, here in his sitting room_ —and his words lodged in his throat. The last time he had seen those eyes… He stopped and gave up on whatever it was he’d been about to say. Instead he gestured to Sherlock’s cheek. “You should put some ice on that. I’ll be back tomorrow, okay?”  
  
Sherlock gave a frown that made it clear he didn't understand what was happening. Well, that was his own damn fault, the bastard. Eventually, Sherlock nodded and John left.  
  
***  
  
On the way to Mary’s, his mobile went off. One look at the caller ID, and he knew exactly why Mycroft was calling, the realization making him physically ill.  
  
He answered without letting Mycroft utter a single word. “You knew this entire time, and unless you’re calling to deny it, you can go fuck yourself.” Then he hung up.  
  
After that, his thoughts essentially shut down. Every time he tried to picture Sherlock sitting in his (their?) flat, or ordering takeaway, or examining the patterns of dust, or showering, or reading, or whatever he might be doing at that very moment, he was hit by a jolt of exhaustion that made these mental images impossible to sustain. He managed to arrive at Mary's doorstep without any memory of how he had gotten there, or of his own thoughts during the journey. And it wasn't until he raised a hand to her buzzer that he realized he had forgotten to warn her he was coming.  
  
“John,” she said in surprise upon opening the door. “Come in. Is everything okay?”  
  
He stepped silently into her flat, and realized he didn't know the answer to that question. Was anything okay? It seemed like the most complicated thing he'd ever been asked.  
  
Mary must have read something in his eyes, because she led him to the couch and eased him onto it, taking the seat beside him, never letting go of his hand. She looked radiant in her concern, and in that moment John thought he loved her more than ever.  
  
“What's wrong?” she asked. John could hear her slipping into her doctor voice, the same calming tone he used on his own patients.  
  
His first attempt to speak failed. He cleared his throat and looked at the floor, saying the words but hearing them as though they came from somewhere else. “Sherlock is back.”  
  
In the silence that followed, John didn't need to look up to picture the confusion on Mary's face. “But...John,” she said slowly, “you told me he was dead.”  
  
And that was the sentence that finally opened the heavily reinforced floodgates. “He—he lied,” John stammered. Too many emotions were rushing in at once: the visceral memory of how happy he had once been, and then how devastated. He felt three years of grief all compressed into this one moment, with the sharp sting of betrayal slicing through it. “He lied to me. He made me _watch_ and it was all a lie, and I…I can't…” He realized his vision had blurred before he noticed the sobs wracking his body. He buried as much of his head as he could in his own arms, tensing against the arm that Mary draped over his shoulders. He wanted to curl himself up into a ball so tiny he'd simply vanish from the world.  
  
“I don’t understand,” he choked, the sound muffled and wet and pathetic. “Why did he come back? Why now? Oh god, I can't do it, not again.” He began to lose track of what he was saying. He was confessing nonsense into the crooks of his elbows, pushing the words through his tears, letting everything spill from him as though he’d been gutted. He wanted to make himself hollow, empty. He wanted to purge everything like vomit. “It was so hard. It was so _fucking_ hard. He _left_ me. He didn’t die, he left! _Fuck_.” It didn’t matter that his chest hurt, or that it was becoming difficult to breathe. He still forced it out: the tears, the heaving cries, the vicious words. “God, he should be _dead_. I _want_ him to be dead. Jesus Christ, what the fuck does he want from me?” he shouted.  
  
Then, he couldn’t breathe at all. The air was coming out in short, terrified little gasps. He felt as though his ribcage were being squeezed in a giant fist, his entire body taken in a cold sweat.  
  
He was sadly familiar with the symptoms of his own panic attacks, and he fell back on instinct to get him through it. He focused on his breathing: five seconds in, hold, five seconds out. Repeat. He ignored the gripping pain in his chest, the sensation of drowning. _You’re not dying, Watson. You’re not dying._ Eventually he noticed the small circles being rubbed into his back and let them ground him. And when the blood finally stopped pounding in his ears, he could hear Mary’s quiet, encouraging words.  
  
“Shh, it’s okay John. Just breathe. You’re going to be fine. I’ve got you.”  
  
After a moment, his head began to clear and it became slightly more bearable to breathe. He stayed in his curled-up position for a while longer, slowly filling his lungs through his nose. He turned his head to the side to suck in more oxygen, but it was away from Mary and not towards her. He hated her seeing him like this. It was one thing to wake up from a nightmare and to be comforted in the dark. But to break down in the middle of the day, in the middle of a conversation? He heard Ella’s voice in his head, telling him that it was nothing to be ashamed of and that it didn’t make him weak, but at that moment, weak was exactly how he felt.  
  
The upshot, at least, was that he was now too physically wracked to sustain the level of emotion he’d been dealing with a moment ago. He’d wanted to get it out, and now he felt thoroughly drained, the knowledge of Sherlock’s return distant and detached. He finally uncoiled his aching body, still avoiding Mary’s eyes.  
  
“I’m okay,” he said softly, staring at his palms. “I’m really sorry. I hope I didn’t scare you. I’m fine.”  
  
She pulled him in by the shoulders and placed a kiss on his temple. “Clearly you’re not. Come on, let me take a look at you.”  
  
John was grateful for the professionalism in her voice, for the lack of pity. He placed himself in her capable hands, fighting down his shame as she held his slightly trembling wrist in her fingers and looked at her watch.  
  
“Really, I’m fine,” he repeated.  
  
Mary hummed in response, then released his wrist. “Not your first panic attack, I suppose?” It was barely a question, and John didn’t answer. She quickly checked his pupils, then cupped his cheek, apparently satisfied. “You didn’t scare me,” she said with a warm smile. “I’ve seen far worse.”  
  
John chuckled. “So have I. That’s the problem.” Shit—he knew immediately it was the wrong thing to say. Mary’s expression darkened, so he leaned in for a quick kiss and changed the subject.  
  
“Do you think I could sleep here tonight?”  
  
“I insist. Doctor’s orders,” Mary replied, eyebrow raised. It was such an old joke between them that John nearly groaned. But it did lighten the atmosphere, and by the time they both got into bed, he was close to feeling like himself again, the nightmare of a few hours ago easier to manage.  
  
He held her in the dark, and stroked her hair away from her face. She really was a remarkable woman. “I’m so sorry,” he said.  
  
“Stop apologizing, John. It’s fine,” she whispered, placing her hand over his hip.  
  
“You don’t understand—“  
  
“And I don’t need to understand tonight. You can explain everything in the morning. But right now, you need to get some sleep.” She kissed his mouth then rolled over, wrapping herself in John’s arms and nestling into his chest.  
  
John sighed and curled around her. What Mary didn’t understand was that everything was going to be upended, and she didn’t deserve what was to about to come. He didn’t know how things would change; he just knew in his bones that they would, and that it would hurt. Sherlock had returned. There was no telling what tomorrow would bring. But for now, he pushed that terrifying thought from his mind and finally managed to drift to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to breathedout for being my lovely beta this chapter.

In the morning, John had a brief, blissful moment of respite, drifting semi-conscious between a dreamless sleep and full awareness. But the next instant, he remembered that he was lying in Mary’s bed, and Sherlock was alive. The revelations of last night settled like a lead weight in his heart.  
  
He could smell cooking in the air, and when he finally opened his eyes he found the bed next to him was empty. Pulling on some of the spare clothes he kept in Mary’s flat, he headed to the kitchen.  
  
“Morning,” she greeted him from the stove where she was poking at something in a pan. “I have to leave in half an hour, but breakfast is almost ready. Feeling any better?”  
  
“A bit.” There was no feeling _good_ with the knowledge of what he’d have to go home and face, but in the daylight he no longer felt as though his life were suddenly spiraling out of control. “What are you making?”  
  
“Eggs,” she replied cheerily. Mary was even more of a morning person than he was.  
  
“Since when did you know how to make eggs?” he teased.  
  
“I’ll have you know I’m not _completely_ useless in the kitchen.” She stared into the pan and frowned. “Although they are looking a bit scrambled for an omelet.” She tipped the contents onto a plate, and John took a seat at the table. “Here you go. It doesn’t look like much, but I promise it’s edible.”  
  
The meal she set in front of him was definitely not an omelet, but it did look nourishing. He took a grateful bite and thanked her.  
  
“So,” she said, taking a seat next to him with her own scrambled dish in front of her, “do you want to tell me what happened last night?  Or we can wait if you’re still not feeling up to it…”  
  
“No, we should talk.” John’s chest seized just _thinking_ of discussing it, but he certainly owed Mary an explanation. He stared at his plate and frowned. “Sherlock came back.”  
  
“So you said. He’s not dead, then.”  
  
“No, he’s not dead.” John took another bite, but the meal had lost its taste.  
  
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Her question was careful, hurt, and at first John didn’t know what she was asking. He _had_ told her. Hadn’t she been listening? But then he looked up and saw the misunderstanding spelled out in her expression. God, she thought he had known. She thought he’d known all this time, and he’d been using “death” as a euphemism for “breakup.”  
  
He locked her in a hard stare. “I didn’t tell you because I had no idea. Not until last night. I wasn’t lying to you.”  
  
The uncertainty in her eyes was replaced by confusion, and really, could he blame her? He wasn’t sure he would believe himself in her position. “You’re saying that you _mistakenly_ believed he was dead.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
She shook her head slightly. “That’s…I don’t know what that is. That’s awful.”  
  
John tapped his fork against his plate, and tried to think of how to explain. “The thing is, I _watched_ him die. I wasn’t lying about that either. I saw him jump off the roof of Bart’s and land on the pavement.” He paused, reconsidered. “Well, no, I didn’t actually see him hit the ground I suppose. But I saw his body afterwards. I felt it. He had no pulse.” His usual response to these memories was grief and guilt, but now he didn’t know what to feel. He felt sort of numb, actually.  
  
“I’m sorry, I still don’t understand,” said Mary. She sounded apologetic, and considering John’s breakdown last night, he wasn’t surprised she was treading carefully. “You think he somehow recovered, and never told you?”  
  
John looked at her, puzzled. It struck him that she didn’t know Sherlock at all. She had heard all of his stories, and she knew their entire history, but she didn’t _know_ Sherlock. No one who ever knew him could ask such a question.  
  
“Of course not,” said John. “I’m sure he faked the whole thing so he could disappear.”  
  
Mary seemed thunderstruck by that statement. “How can someone fake jumping off of a roof?”  
  
John shrugged, took another bite. “No idea.”  
  
“Then what happened last night? How did you find out?”  
  
“Oh, he showed up in my flat. No warning or anything, just…” John stared off into space, remembering the encounter. “Just showed up.”  
  
When he felt a hand gripping his arm, he turned his head to meet Mary’s look of shock. “My god, no wonder you were upset. What did you do?”  
  
John laughed darkly. “Basically, I punched him. Then I left and came here.”  
  
Shaking her head, Mary released her hold and began rubbing his arm encouragingly. They ate in silence for a while after that. John didn’t know what Mary was thinking because his own thoughts were miles away, over at 221B. Would Sherlock be there when he returned? What if he left again? Maybe the whole thing had been some fevered dream. Maybe last night was singular, and he would never see him again. The idea was terrifying, but John tried not to analyze the reason it scared him.  
  
Mary broke into his thoughts when she said,  “I guess…what I don’t understand is _why_. If it’s true, why on earth would anyone need to fake their own death, and why come back now?”  
  
Why, indeed. He found he couldn’t stop thinking about the last conversation they had before Sherlock plummeted. How Sherlock had tried to convince him that he was in fact a fraud. His “note,” as he called it; the ultimate insult to John’s intelligence. At the time John assumed that Sherlock was trying, in a completely misguided way, to soften the blow of his death.  
  
But Sherlock’s survival cast everything in a new light. Maybe Sherlock had simply been trying to lend credibility to the suicide. _Tell anyone who will listen_ , he had instructed. Make everyone believe he had a reason to kill himself, and it would be that much easier to vanish. But John had told no one of Sherlock’s final words, not even Mycroft. He didn’t need to, because it was what everyone believed anyway, which was clearly what Sherlock wanted. God, why would he want that? Why would he want to put John through the additional pain of reading and refuting all of those lies? And if it was so fucking important to disappear, what changed last night to prompt his return?  
  
John realized he hadn’t answered Mary’s question. “I’m guessing he ran off to go on some mission, and now that mission is over. He probably thought he was doing the right thing. He had— _has_ a really fucked up notion of what the right thing is.”  
  
“So where is he now?” Mary asked.  
  
“Still in my flat, I suppose.” John saw the unease flash across her features, and he quickly realized how that must sound. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t turn him away. He doesn’t have anyone else but his brother, and he hates his brother.” He paused to correct himself once again. “Hated. Who knows? Maybe they’re best chums now.” Anything was possible. Anything could change in three years. He’d changed. So he’d have to stop thinking about Sherlock as a locked-in memory, a fixed point. He had been reliable in death, but now he was an unknown variable. Everything had changed overnight.  
  
Mary considered this for a moment. “I want to meet him,” she decided.  
  
John cringed at the thought. “Not just yet. We have some things we need to work out first. But soon, okay? I promise.”  
  
Mary studied him, then leaned in and kissed him on the side of the mouth. “Okay.” She stood and brought both of their plates to the sink.  
  
It wasn’t until she was bent over the dishes with the sound of running water nearly blocking out her words that she looked back over her shoulder and asked, “Do you love him?”  
  
Oh god, what an impossible question. John’s heart physically ached in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time. He answered honestly, this time careful with his tenses. “I did love him. But you can’t love someone who let you believe they were dead for three years.”  
  
Mary turned back to the sink, but just before she averted her eyes John could see that she wasn’t quite sure she believed that.  
  
***  
  
The thing was, John _did_ love him. Death didn’t diminish love; if anything, it crystallized it, sharpened it into something flawless and pure. He’d spent the last three years loving Sherlock’s memory with impunity. It would have been different had Sherlock left him—if John _realized_ that Sherlock had left him. It still would have hurt but he would have had three years to nurse those wounds. Love would have turned to resentment, would have turned to indifference, and John would have been over him by now. Instead, he had to make the abrupt mental shift to thinking of Sherlock’s death as abandonment, taking that misguided love and trampling it underfoot like the garbage it was. Nothing about that was easy, and he didn’t know what he would feel when he saw Sherlock again: love, or hate, or both at the same time.  
  
He managed to find someone to cover for him at work—he was certainly in no mood to see patients—and returned to his flat before noon, dreading it with his entire body. It took him a full minute just to open the front door. Before he could go upstairs, Mrs. Hudson ambushed him in the hallway.  
  
“Oh, John!” She wrapped her thin arms around him in a bracing hug. “Isn’t it wonderful, dear?”  
  
He sighed and patted her awkwardly on the back. “I suppose he talked to you, then.”  
  
“Nearly gave me a bloody heart attack!” she cried, stepping back and placing a hand to her chest. “I thought I was seeing things. I thought, that’s it, you’ve finally lost your mind. But there's no mistaking him, is there? No one else like him in the world...” Here her voice broke, she brought her hand to her face, and before John knew it she was crying. “I'm sorry, love, it's just all so much to take in. You must be so happy. Oh, come here...” And she caught him in another hug.  
  
Happy? For some reason, it hadn’t really occurred to John to be happy. He was _glad_ Sherlock was alive, of course he was glad, but he’d been too busy dealing with a mess of other emotions to be _happy_ about it. With Mrs. Hudson’s arms around him, he gave it a try, feeling happy about Sherlock’s return—and it brought on such an onslaught of relief and longing and a desire to go right back to the way things were before, that he quickly clamped down on any positive feelings entirely. If he wanted any control over the situation, he’d have to stick to anger.  
  
“There now,” he said, pulling away and placing a hand on her shoulder. “He’d be appalled to see you cry without using it as some sort of ploy.” Mrs. Hudson laughed through her tears. “Is he upstairs?”  
  
“No, he popped out I think. But he said he'd be back soon.”  
  
He hadn’t been aware of the tension in his shoulders until it relaxed at her words. “Thanks, Mrs. Hudson.”  
  
On his way up she called out, "Be good to him, John, will you? He's had a rough time of it, I can tell.”  
  
***  
  
John was in the armchair reading a book—well, staring at it, really—when Sherlock finally returned an hour later. The sound of familiar footsteps on the stairs was enough to flood him with terrified anticipation and also relief. When Sherlock finally opened the door, John’s fingers dug into the book’s pages. It seemed that preparing for this moment made it no less shocking to see that angular face again, dark bruise spreading along Sherlock’s cheek, framed by an ever-upturned coat collar. John had planned to say something sardonic or mundane, anything to diminish this oppressive weight, but as Sherlock stood in the doorway, he found himself speechless and a bit dizzy. There were no appropriate words for this moment, so he lowered his book and stared and tried his best to shut down his emotional response.  
  
Sherlock spoke instead. “Your girlfriend,” he began with a hint of disdain. John sighed and put the book away. Was that really going to be the first thing they discussed? “She's a doctor as well, but you don't work in the same office. If I had to guess, I'd say pediatrician. You've been seeing each other for about a year, but you’re not planning to move in together. Her last relationship was with a woman who had two cats that your girlfriend was allergic to. She has shoulder length straight black hair, she's right handed, about five foot five, medium build, and is a terrible cook.” He paused as though waiting for John to interject. “Did I get anything wrong?”  
  
John had to close his eyes and take a deep breath. He hated this. He used to get so much enjoyment out of Sherlock’s improbable observations, but now for the first time it felt invasive. Sherlock couldn’t impress him anymore, or rather he refused to be impressed. “No, all correct. Anything else you'd like to know?” The question was heavy with sarcasm, but Sherlock in his fashion took it at face value.  
  
“How did you meet?”  
  
“Online dating.”  
  
“Ugh. Boring.”  
  
John shrugged. It wasn’t original, but it had worked.  
  
Sherlock removed his scarf and hung it up in its usual place as though he’d always lived there. As though he’d never left. “You told her about me.”  
  
“I told her everything,” John confirmed. With his voice, he tried to convey what ‘everything’ encompassed: the crime solving, the danger, the relationship that slowly turned sexual even though John had never been with a man before and Sherlock had never been with anyone, the day that John decided they were a couple, and the day he watched Sherlock fall.  
  
Sherlock stared at him—it would be difficult getting used to that intense scrutiny again—then turned around to hang up his coat. John was expecting him to have a seat so they could talk, but instead Sherlock paced around the room, examining things that probably only he could see.  
  
“You went back to your therapist,” he said from the fireplace.  
  
John very much did not want to be interrogated about his life right now, but he could see there was no avoiding it. And there was no point in hiding anything anyway, not when Sherlock had probably spent the night studying the evidence of his flat. John was proud of how calm he sounded when he stated, “Yeah, and I still see her once a week. Problem with that?”  
  
Sherlock glanced at him, but didn’t answer, and he didn’t need to. Some things hadn’t changed with time. Some things could still be conveyed silently, such as “I don’t trust the soft sciences and I think it’s a waste of your time, but if I say that out loud you’ll just be angry.” And John simply had to lower his chin to respond, “Good deduction.”  
  
Sherlock walked over to the desk, fingering the nicks and scratches in its surface. “How long did you have a dog?”  
  
“About…seven months?” John calculated. “He died of cancer. It didn’t exactly help with my ‘everyone around me is doomed’ phase.”  
  
Continuing to move about the room, Sherlock paused where his yellow spray paint used to be. Finding the same wallpaper to cover it over had been damn expensive, but John couldn’t stand waking every morning to that lurid smile, and Mrs. Hudson had offered to split the cost.  
  
“When did your limp return?” Sherlock asked as he dragged a finger over the spot. The bullet holes could still be felt, John knew.  
  
“A month after you died. And it was about five months before I was able to stop using the cane.” John rubbed at his leg in memory, but it hadn’t bothered him for some time now. “If you’re going to keep asking me questions, you may as well sit down. You’re making me agitated.”  
  
Sherlock stared at the offered seat with suspicion. But eventually he did come over and drop himself into the chair, folding his hands in his lap, unnaturally still. At this distance, John couldn’t look him in the eye, so he stared at Sherlock’s knee. God, he wanted to place a hand on that knee, just to feel the thigh underneath his trousers. The space between them was unbearably cold. To think there was a time when he would have walked over, touched his cheek, and kissed him and it all would have felt perfectly natural. Or spread those knees apart and—John quickly looked away, refusing to finish that thought.  
  
“You can ask me questions instead,” said Sherlock, uncertain again. Why was he so uncertain? Sherlock was never supposed to be uncertain, about anything.  
  
John crossed his arms. “Where were you?” he asked, the safest question he could think of.  
  
Sherlock took a slow breath. “I never stayed in one place for long, but—”  
  
“No, not that,” John interrupted. “I mean just now. Where were you just now?”  
  
“Oh.” Sherlock’s face fell, almost imperceptibly. “I was visiting Lestrade.”  
  
Lestrade, Christ. John was surprised there was only a single bruise on Sherlock’s face. Though he supposed Greg didn’t have as much reason to be furious as John did. Hell, _no one_ had as much reason to be furious. “How did he react, then?”  
  
“After he restrained himself from shooting me, he accused me of nearly losing him his job. And then—” Sherlock’s face contorted, caught somewhere between disgust and amusement— “he hugged me.”  
  
He wasn’t sure if it was Sherlock’s expression, the way he said it, or the mental image of that awkward embrace. But whatever it was, John burst out into a genuine laughter that took him by surprise. “He hugged you!” John roared. “Oh god, I wish I could have seen that.”  
  
Sherlock smiled in return, an expression that made him just a bit more familiar. “Considering I was braced for another attack, it wasn’t quite reciprocal.” That set John off again, and for a moment, everything started to feel bearable. If he could joke in the midst of this insanity, then maybe things had a chance of being okay.  
  
John pulled out his phone, still chuckling, and sent Greg a message that said, _You HUGGED him?_  
  
“What are you writing?” Sherlock asked, craning his neck. John just shook his head in amusement, waiting for Greg’s response, which came through a second later.  
  
 _Let me know if you want a pint._  
  
 _Tonight?_ John quickly replied.  
  
“So let’s see,” said John, pocketing the phone. “That’s me, Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, I assume Mycroft already knew…did you speak to Molly yet?” There were really only so many people who needed to know that Sherlock was alive.  
  
A shadow passed over Sherlock’s face, eclipsing the smile that had just been there. The man from three years ago vanished with it and John was back to speaking with a stranger. “No.”  
  
John’s heart went out to her. He hadn’t kept in touch with Molly as much as he had with Greg—they didn’t have a whole lot in common—but it must have been difficult for her. She cared about Sherlock, romantically or otherwise, and Sherlock couldn’t even be arsed to tell her he wasn’t dead? “Were you planning to, or should I?”  
  
Sherlock looked away as though the wall had suddenly caught his attention. “There’s no need,” he said.  
  
Before John could chastise Sherlock for his cruelty, those words sank in like knives. John blinked. That couldn’t mean what it sounded like. There was no possible way. John’s entire body went cold, and then blazing hot. “You’re _not_ saying…” Sherlock continued to study the wall, and John jumped up from his seat, propelled by anger. “ _Molly Hooper_ knew? For how long?”  
  
Sherlock met his eyes, and he didn’t need to say the answer out loud.  
  
“Fuck,” he shouted to the ceiling. The entire time. She knew the entire time. “How can—” He carded a hand through his hair, yanked at his scalp, words failing him as violence thrummed through his veins. “Fuck!” he shouted again.  
  
Just when he thought he’d reached the end of the betrayal… No, fuck this. He needed to leave. Rage was boiling through him, making him feel dangerous and afraid of himself. If he stayed here any longer, he would do something he’d regret.  
  
He pulled out his phone again as he walked to the door. Greg had responded.  
  
 _7 at Sam’s?_  
  
He ignored it and composed a new text.  
  
“What are you doing?” asked Sherlock, swiveling in his seat.  
  
“I’m telling Molly never to speak to me again,” John explained as he texted, trying to stay calm. “And then I’m going for a very long walk.”  
  
He sent the message, and received a reply by the time his coat was on.  
  
 _John, I am so sorry. Did he explain?_  
  
John deleted it, turned to Sherlock, tried not to go over there and wrap his hands around the man’s throat, and then hesitated. “Are you—will you be here when I get back?” And he hated himself, absolutely bloody _hated_ that he needed to ask that question. But despite everything, he was terrified that Sherlock might once again disappear the moment he let him out of his sight. He couldn’t stand to be in the same room with him; he couldn’t stand to be away from him. John Watson was well and truly fucked.  
  
“Where else would I go?” Sherlock replied. Which didn’t make any sense.  
  
 _Anywhere_ , thought John. _Anywhere, apparently, except here with me._  
  
***  
  
When John entered the pub at seven, there were a few people watching the football match from the bar, and a table of men and women in suits who had clearly come straight from the office, but otherwise it was pretty quiet. That was why he and Greg like to meet here; it was a good place for a heart to heart while getting pissed.  
  
Greg waved to him from the back, a mostly empty glass in front of him, and John acknowledged him with a nod. He ordered a round from the bar and brought it back to the booth.  
  
“Thanks for coming out,” he said, sliding onto the wooden bench.  
  
Greg just stared at him and shook his head. “Bloody hell.”  
  
John couldn’t imagine a more eloquent summary of the past twenty-four hours. “Cheers to that,” he said, and they clinked glasses.  
  
“So,” said Greg after a moment of contemplative silence, “he’s not dead.”  
  
“And if he were here, he’d accuse you of stating the obvious,” John replied, smiling and then wincing, because good god. He didn’t need to start _sounding_ like Sherlock on top of everything else.  
  
“I still can’t believe it. I jumped out of my bloody skin when I saw him. Did he tell you I almost shot him? He’s damn lucky he got off with only a hug.”  
  
“He definitely deserves worse,” John agreed.  
  
Greg paused and gave him a meaningful look. He was transparent in his concern, and John found that he was grateful. Unlike Mary, Greg had been there, he knew Sherlock, and he understood at least a fraction of what John was feeling. “What about you, then? How are you holding up?”  
  
John sighed and rubbed a finger against his temple. “I’m not actually sure. I haven’t murdered him yet, and I haven’t slept with him yet, and I’ve only had one nervous breakdown so far, so…I guess I’m handling things as well as can be expected.”  
  
Greg shook his head again and took another sip of beer. “I’m guessing you were the one who punched him in the face, though.”  
  
Despite himself, John smiled at that. “I take full credit. Like I said, it’s a shock I didn’t murder him.”  
  
“Well, if you ever need the Met to look the other way, just let me know.” Greg laughed into his drink. “I probably shouldn’t be saying that.”  
  
“Don’t worry,” said John. “I think the murderous phase has passed. I just…I don’t know what happens from here.” He looked down and tightened the grip on his glass. “He let me believe this lie for so long. He put me through hell. He—well, you know. Then he just swans in one day like nothing’s changed? I don’t know what he wants from me.”  
  
“Sod what he wants. What do _you_ want?”  
  
“I want him to go away,” John answered without thought. But even saying the words brought on the fear that it might actually happen. He couldn’t bear the thought of Sherlock leaving him again; he just wanted to go back to blissful ignorance, back to when he still believed he was dead and gone. No…god no, he didn’t want that either. He sighed, leaning back in his seat. “Christ, I don’t know. I have my own life now. I’m not going to throw everything away for him.”  
  
“Why, has he asked you to?”  
  
“No, he hasn’t asked me for anything yet,” he answered, realizing it was true. “But he wouldn’t ask, would he? He’d just expect it.” He brought his drink to his lips and for a second, the smell of alcohol took him back to a much darker time. “Do you know how long it took me to pull myself up out of that hole he left me in?”  
  
Greg gave him a steady look. “Yeah, I do.”  
  
John laughed darkly, because yeah, he did. Greg knew exactly what he was talking about. He’d stuck around tenaciously, and he’d been there to see John at his lowest: heavy limp, bills piling up, absolute mess of a hotel room that he couldn’t afford, drinking habits that left him terrified of becoming his sister. And he had been there to see John pull himself together again. That was twice now that John had lost everything he had once used to define his life, and survived. Not just survived, but _grown_ from it, dammit. He deserved what he now had: a steady income, a smart, beautiful woman, and a quiet life full of friends. What if Sherlock took that away from him?  
  
John drained the last of his beer and Greg motioned for the next round.  
  
“What does Mary have to say about all of this?” Greg asked.  
  
John shrugged. “We haven’t talked much about it yet.” He knew that Mary trusted him, but at the same she was probably trying to work out where she stood. John groaned and hung his head in his hands. “Christ, the whole situation is fucked up.”  
  
“You know, this might not be my place to ask, but…” Greg hesitated, which made John nervous. What was left between them that couldn’t be asked? They’d grown close since Sherlock’s death (disappearance, John mentally corrected himself) and there weren’t many secrets between them. Greg, like John, was straightforward and honest. It was one of the reasons why John liked having him around. Greg cleared his throat. “Do you still love him?”  
  
It was a question uncomfortably similar to Mary’s, and, John supposed, not a surprise. Greg had been with him one night shortly after Sherlock’s suicide when he had drunkenly confessed his feelings. John exhaled and gave an answer like the one he’d given Mary. “How can I after what he did?”  
  
“Well sure, but once he explained to me…”  
  
“Not to me,” John immediately interrupted, afraid that Greg might share the justification he still didn’t want to hear. “I don’t give a fuck what his excuses are. It doesn’t change what he did.”  
  
According to Greg’s disapproving frown, it seemed he didn’t quite agree. “For Christ’s sake, John, don’t you want to know _why_? You have to talk to him.”  
  
“No. I don’t,” John quietly insisted. “It doesn’t make a difference. Just drop it.”  
  
Greg seemed to consider pressing the matter, then relented. “Suit yourself.”  
  
They talked about other things: Greg’s impending divorce, details from a recent case, and John’s more amusing patients. But Sherlock still lingered in the corners of their conversation, refusing to be ignored, even though John was trying his hardest to do exactly that.  
  
And the truly awful realization was that Greg knew how John felt about Sherlock, when Sherlock had no idea. John had never actually told him. It had been his most painful regret, the single thing he wished he could say if he’d been given just one last chance. And now, by some miracle or curse, he actually had that opportunity. Yet he could no longer possibly imagine saying “I love you” to Sherlock Holmes. Not after everything. Not anymore.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to my lovely extra two pairs of eyes, breathedout and thisprettywren.

The next day was the start of the weekend and John’s day off, though he had never been more anxious to go into work and get away from the flat. He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, piecing together a vague memory of waking in the middle of the night and sensing someone watching him from the doorway. Or was that a dream? No, he was certain it had happened. His sleep-addled brain hadn’t even been disturbed by it. Quite the opposite—he’d found Sherlock’s gaze strangely comforting, and he’d fallen back into a deep sleep that lasted till morning. Now he was awake, and nothing was quite so simple.  
  
When John finally made his way downstairs, he wasn’t entirely surprised to find that Sherlock was already awake. Possibly, he hadn’t actually slept. What was more surprising was that Sherlock had made coffee. John helped himself without offering thanks, because if Sherlock thought he could apologize with gestures that would be commonplace coming from anyone else, he was mistaken.  
  
With coffee, toast, and the newspaper, John sat down across from Sherlock at the kitchen table—the kitchen table that was perfectly clean and fit for eating off of, unlike three years ago. Sherlock’s fingers were poised above the keys of his new laptop, but his eyes had been following John’s every movement from the time he entered the room. John could feel the weight of them even when he buried himself in that morning’s paper. It was like a physical touch that made him itch.  
  
“Any plans for today?” John finally asked, because he had to say something to break the tension. Their silences used to be so comfortable.  
  
He looked up when a minute elapsed and Sherlock hadn’t answered. Jesus, that face…if it weren’t for the shortness of Sherlock’s hair, and that strange look in his eye that could almost pass for sadness, it would be easy to believe that the last few years were nothing more than some vivid, horrifying dream. “Sherlock?”  
  
Sherlock seemed to shake himself out of his thoughts. He blinked and breathed in sharply. “Shopping. Mycroft intercepted my more important possessions from the skip, but I’ll probably need a new wardrobe and other basic essentials. Dull, but necessary.”  
  
Something about the practical considerations for rebuilding a life tugged at John’s chest. Sherlock’s tone was matter-of-fact, but it made John reflect for the first time on how much he had given up when he jumped from that roof. Clothing was just the tip of it. At least he had managed to hold on to that remarkable coat, John thought, smiling internally.  
  
“What about later tonight?” he asked. “Are you going to be available?”  
  
Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “You seem to think my availability is questionable. I assure you, sitting in your flat and counting dust particles is my only occupation at the moment.”  
  
John noted the bitterness underlying that statement, unsurprising considering how much Sherlock detested being idle. He also took note of the phrase, ‘ _your_ flat.’ Sherlock was always careful with his words, and it gave him an idea of where they stood. Some irrational part of him was sad to think that Sherlock no longer felt at home here, while the rest of him was glad to hear Sherlock admit to intruding on John’s life.  
  
“I ask, because I want you to meet Mary. She’s agreed to have dinner with us tonight. I was thinking Angelo’s, since I’m sure he’ll be happy to see you.”  
  
Sherlock’s expression darkened as he considered the offer. “Do I have to?”  
  
“If you want to be a part of my life again, then yes, you have to.” Not that Sherlock had any right to come back into his life.  
  
And though he and Mary had discussed it last night over the phone, John still thought it was a terrible idea. His feelings toward Sherlock were confused at best, and he did not want Mary to see that. But she had insisted, and John figured he might as well get it over with sooner than later.  
  
In a previous time, Sherlock might have huffed in annoyance and given some cutting remark. Instead, he gave more of a resigned sigh before returning his attention to his screen. “Fine. But it’s not my fault if I don’t like her.”  
  
“Fair enough,” said John, going back to his paper. “I’m sure she’ll feel the same.”  
  
***  
  
The night was cool and pleasant as John and Sherlock traveled to Angelo's together through London’s noisy streets. The walk gave John the opportunity to impart some necessary threats.  
  
“Behave yourself tonight,” he said in a low voice. “Keep the insults to a minimum, and don't start, I don’t know, talking about our sex life or something. Don’t talk about our past relationship at all, in fact.”  
  
Sherlock was sullen and tense. “You said yourself that she already knows everything. Why avoid it?”  
  
“It's called tact, and if you won't exercise it for decency's sake, at least do it for me.”  
  
“Fine,” said Sherlock, jaw clenched. “Any other rules I should be aware of?”  
  
John had never heard the word ‘rules’ spoken with such hatred. It was going to be a long night. “Just…please be pleasant if you can manage it.”  
  
“Why should I?”  
  
“Because foolish as it sounds, I want you two to get along. I don’t want her to absolutely hate you.”  
  
“Why?” This time it was less of a challenge, and more genuine curiosity.  
  
The answer was that John needed his sanity intact. Because he didn’t know what he would do if they hated each other. Mary and Sherlock were both important to him, though in different and complicated ways, and John wasn’t praying for any miracles here but he needed to know he could keep them both in his life without disaster. He also cared deeply about both of their opinions. He couldn’t stand the thought of Mary criticizing his past life, or Sherlock criticizing his current one.  
  
Earlier, he’d given Mary a different set of warnings, preparing her for the worst.  
  
“You should know that he doesn’t have any filters. He just says whatever he’s thinking, _especially_ if it’s going to press buttons. Also, he does this thing where he looks at you and he knows your entire life story, so if he starts rattling off personal facts, don’t let it throw you. It won’t be things that I’ve told him. He’s just…I don’t know, observant. Oh, and he doesn’t always eat. So I’m not sure yet if he’s going to order anything, but if he doesn’t, he’s not trying to be rude. Well, I’m sure he’ll try to be rude, but the not-eating thing isn’t part of it.”  
  
Mary had cut him off. “ _John_. Relax. I’m sure it’ll be fine. And if he’s really as terrible as you say, it’s just going to make me look good, right?”  
  
She said it like a joke, but John sensed the truth behind it. The last thing he wanted was for this to turn into a competition. He was _with_ Mary, while Sherlock barely had a claim to his friendship, so why did it feel as though he were pitting them against each other? He couldn’t believe he was putting her through this—fucking hell, he couldn’t believe he was putting himself through this.  
  
John gave Sherlock a look and sighed. “Let’s just make this as painless as possible, yeah?”  
  
By the time they reached Angelo’s, John was a tight knot of nerves. He suddenly realized that he didn’t _want_ Sherlock integrated into his life. He wanted him tucked away into a corner of his flat, close by for his own peace of mind, but hidden from view. He wanted Sherlock to be some secret he could come home to, completely separate from everything else he had. What a selfish, fucked up thing to want.  
  
And it was too late for that, anyway, because Mary was already waiting for them outside. Her eyes were locked on Sherlock as they approached, no doubt sizing him up. John knew what sort of first impression Sherlock gave; he remembered it from when they met. Sherlock was tall and striking, intimidating even, with confidence radiating from his posture and his stride and his sharp eyes. The truly nasty bruise across his face did little to diminish the effect. He was definitely not the man John would have ever imagined himself with, had he ever imagined himself with a man, and a small, guilty part of him hoped that Mary was impressed.  
  
He tried not to think about Sherlock’s initial impression of Mary. Sherlock was never impressed.  
  
When they finally met at the door, John came right up to Mary, wrapped an arm around her waist, and kissed her cheek. He felt a bit possessive, but he wanted to make it clear, to both of them, where his priorities were. He made the introductions without removing his hand from her back.  
  
“Mary, this is Sherlock Holmes.”  
  
She smiled and offered her hand. “It’s good to meet you. I’m glad to hear you’re not dead.”  
  
“Are you?” Sherlock asked, glare on full stun. John had to cough pointedly into his fist before Sherlock narrowed his eyes and finally shook her hand with the focus of an athlete meeting his rival before a match. Then he smirked. “Pediatrician. I was right.”  
  
“How—” said Mary, but John steered her to the door before she could finish the question.  
  
“Don’t ask, or we’ll be out here all night.”  
  
Inside the restaurant, Angelo was all warmth and generosity, slapping backs and pouring copious amounts of wine. John had explained everything when he made the reservation, so there was no moment of shock, just the happy reunion. It only turned truly awkward when John introduced Mary as his girlfriend, and Angelo’s eyes immediately sought out Sherlock’s reaction. John rubbed her knee under the table in apology.  
  
“So,” said Mary, glancing about once Angelo had left them alone, “you went here during your first case together, right? ‘A Study in Pink?’”  
  
Sherlock gave John an exaggerated look of fatigue. “She’s read the blog?”  
  
“Of course she’s read the blog,” John snapped. He was already furious with himself. He hadn’t even realized it until Mary’s comment, but he’d clearly chosen a restaurant that meant something to Sherlock, when they should have gone to a place that would’ve made Mary comfortable instead. Stupid.  
  
Mary looked back and forth between them, then put on a pleasant smile. “It reads like fiction. I mean, it’s incredible to think of all those cases you’ve solved. That first one, Study in Pink, might still be my favorite. When you finally figured out—what was it? Rachel? Brilliant.”  
  
Her eyes turned briefly to John, and John saw at once what she was doing. Oh, bless her. She was attempting to bypass Sherlock’s defenses with outright flattery. Because if he had one blind spot, it was definitely his massive ego. How did she pick up on that so quickly?  
  
He could even tell that Sherlock was secretly appeased by the way he addressed Mary directly, as though she were suddenly worthy of his time. Of course, he didn’t go so far as to _thank_ her for the compliment. “It reads like fiction because John’s writing is sentimental. He’s always put too much emphasis on trivial drama, and not enough focus on the actual facts.”  
  
Mary leaned her elbows against the table. “Still, the facts are what make it so fascinating. I think that definitely comes through. And,” she added, smiling at John, “I rather like John’s writing. I don’t think it’s sentimental at all. I keep telling him he should try to get a book deal, but he didn’t think it was right to profit off of your death.”  
  
Sherlock scoffed. “No need to worry about that.”  
  
“Clearly not,” said Mary with a wry smile. John didn’t understand how the two of them could do it, act as though coming back from the dead were an amusing, everyday occurrence when it still made his heart ache if he thought about it for too long. But it was probably in everyone’s best interest to keep the atmosphere light.  
  
They ordered their meals, and even Sherlock chose something from the menu, though when their food later arrived he barely touched it. John drank his wine like water, and tried to keep the uncomfortable silences at bay with any minor thing he could think of: his work, something he’d read in the paper, the last movie he saw. He got the sense that neither Sherlock nor Mary was actually paying him much attention. Sherlock was too busy trying to intimidate Mary with his scrutiny, while Mary kept smiling back at him as though she found his presence delightful, which clearly left Sherlock baffled and annoyed. It was surreal to think of these two people, representing such different parts of John’s life, here in the same room, interacting.  
  
They had nearly finished eating when Mary tucked her hair behind her ear and said, “Come on then, Sherlock. Tell me everything you can about me.”  
  
“Why?” asked Sherlock from across the table, eyes suspiciously narrowed.  
  
“Because John said to expect it, and I’ve been sitting here all night waiting. Come on, I want to see how well you do.”  
  
Sherlock crossed his arms and looked to John, as though seeking permission, which John found oddly sweet. “Go ahead,” John prompted, a bit tipsy by now. “I know you’re dying to show off.” He placed a nervous hand on Mary’s thigh; he’d been doing that all night, unconsciously touching her hand or nudging her foot, maintaining an almost constant physical contact.  
  
Sherlock turned his eyes back to Mary. “You’re a pediatrician, although you used to smoke.”  
  
“Wait,” John interrupted, “you used to smoke?”  
  
Mary winced. “Not since I was a teenager.”  
  
“But you still miss it sometimes,” said Sherlock, blatantly smug.  
  
Mary gave John a small, apologetic shrug, and Sherlock continued.  
  
“You make a decent salary, enough to live on your own, and yet it’s obvious that you cut your own hair. Clearly that’s not a financial decision, and you’re not particularly good at it, so it seems you place value on self-reliance. It might explain why you and John have no plans to move in together. Self-reliance does not extend to learning how to cook, however. John hates your meals, and he’s not a picky eater. You simply haven’t invested the minimal amount of effort it would take to impress him.”  
  
With his biting tone, Sherlock probably thought he was delivering an insult. But Mary knew perfectly well that John hated her cooking, and she couldn’t care less. John squeezed her thigh and raised his eyebrows in a look that said, “Hear that? Minimal effort.” Mary responded with a “too bad” grin.  
  
This quick exchange made Sherlock falter. His frown deepened and his eyes fell to his untouched meal as he delivered the rest of his observations, though John could tell his heart wasn’t in it. “You knit in your spare time—you’re responsible for the hideous scarf in John’s flat.” John bristled at that. He rather liked that scarf, and he wasn’t going to stop wearing it just because Sherlock thought it was ugly. But now he wouldn’t be able to put it on without thinking of Sherlock’s opinion. Dammit. “Knitting is how you entertained yourself on the train when you recently visited your mother in the country.”  
  
The smile fell from Mary’s face, and John cocked his head in surprise. That…wasn’t actually correct, though it wasn’t the first time Sherlock had ever made a mistake.  
  
“What makes you think I visited my mother?” asked Mary.  
  
“Your bracelet,” Sherlock replied with a small gesture, as though it were obvious.  
  
Mary's eyes went wide, and her left hand shot to her right wrist, which wore a pearl bracelet that John had never seen before tonight. He'd noticed it earlier, but Sherlock was too much of a distraction; otherwise, he would have mentioned it.  
  
“What about my bracelet?” The question was strangely quiet, cautious, which caught Sherlock’s attention. He looked up and pressed his hands together under his chin, that familiar gesture John hadn’t seen in so long. It filled him with anxiety. Apparently Sherlock had finally provoked the reaction he was after. Now he was going to enjoy himself.  
  
“The bracelet is new; you keep moving it up and down your wrist like you're trying to find a comfortable place for it. You’re probably not used to wearing much jewelry at all considering it’s the only piece you have on. It’s also far more formal than the rest of your outfit. Clearly not something you would buy for yourself, so it must be a gift, and one of sentimental value or you wouldn’t be wearing it to such an informal dinner. It’s not from John—not his taste at all. It looks like an antique, possibly an heirloom, and that makes an older family member most likely, one that you’re close to. I doubt you would have a living grandmother, so that leaves mother as the best option. Add that to the train ticket stub I saw in your purse, and it's reasonable to assume you were visiting your mother in the country a few days ago when she gave you that bracelet.”  
  
Sherlock sat back in his seat, his self-satisfied expression lasting only a moment before it dissolved back into an impassive mask.  
  
Mary was staring in shock, her fingers still touching the bracelet. She opened her mouth to respond, but then she paused and let out a slow breath. John was well acquainted with Mary’s moods, and this one took him by surprise. Mary was quickly closing herself off like she did when she was upset. It couldn’t have been the mention of her mother. Sherlock must have hit some other nerve, and it bothered John that he didn’t know what it was. He moved his hand to the small of Mary’s back and gave her a questioning frown, but she was too focused on Sherlock to notice.  
  
“My mother is dead,” she finally answered. Her tone was carefully even.  
  
“You're not in mourning,” said Sherlock with his usual lack of delicacy, confused rather than embarrassed.  
  
Mary’s eyes unfocused. “It was a long time ago. When I was a baby. I was raised by my aunt—she’s the one who gave me the bracelet.” And just as quickly, Mary snapped out of it. She grinned and shook her head as though nothing were wrong. “But you’re right, I just came back from visiting her in the country. That was marvelous.”  
  
Sherlock studied her closely. It was plain to John that she was hiding something, even with several glasses of wine in him, so surely it must be obvious to Sherlock. He seemed about to say something, but before he could, Mary gestured to his plate.  
  
“By the way, are you going to finish that? If not, would you mind if I took home the leftovers? Like you said, I hate cooking.”  
  
Sherlock glared and picked up his fork, and John watched in amazement as the entire meal was consumed within minutes.  
  
***  
  
Outside the restaurant, it had started to drizzle lightly. John huddled under Mary’s umbrella—always prepared, that one—while Sherlock let the drops fall on his face, tracing the lines of his features. He looked gorgeous with the rain and his skin glowing under the streetlamps. John quickly chased that thought away, chalking it up to the wine, and pulled his girlfriend closer.  
  
“I’m staying at Mary’s tonight,” he explained. “Do you need a key to the flat?” He realized how silly the question was as soon as he asked it, considering Sherlock had already broken into the building more than once.  
  
Sherlock tilted his head back to the rain and blinked at the sky. “I made a copy of yours.”  
  
John rolled his eyes. “Right. Glad you didn’t wait to ask permission or anything first.” That earned him a glare, and John returned it.  
  
“Thanks again for having dinner with us,” said Mary. “I’m so glad I can finally put a face to John’s stories.”  
  
That seemed to be the moment when Sherlock decided he’d had enough. Without bothering to respond, he simply turned on his heel, long coat flowing, and walked away.  
  
John watched him go, trying to be irritated, but what he felt was closer to pity. Before dinner, he’d been so worried about what this meeting would be like for Mary. Yet Mary, at the end of it, seemed perfectly fine. It was Sherlock who had been tense and uncomfortable all evening, and now he was stalking off with hunched shoulders and a scowl. John used to think that Sherlock’s heart was made of granite, that nothing could get to him. Now, he wasn’t so sure.  
  
***  
  
It wasn’t until later that night, as he and Mary were getting dressed for bed, that John thought to mention the bracelet again. He sat on Mary's mattress, watching as she removed the pearls and placed them on her dresser.  
  
“Earlier tonight…Sherlock said something that bothered you.”  
  
Mary slowed her movements and gave a noncommittal hum.  
  
“It was something to do with your bracelet, yeah?”  
  
At first she was silent, her lips pursed in thought. John pulled off his socks while he waited for her response. But Mary just shook her head and picked up her brush. “I don't really want to talk about it now,” she said. “I'll explain later.”  
  
“Mary—” John started, but she cut him off with a warning look. John clenched his jaw to keep himself from pursuing the matter. He knew from experience that if he pressed further, Mary would just shut down completely. It was endlessly frustrating considering how often she convinced _him_ to open up, usually after a particularly violent dream. He just wanted a little fucking balance in the caregiving. But this was an old argument, and he let it go for now.  
  
The brush passed through Mary's dark hair for a minute or two before she said, seemingly out of nowhere, “Is he really as clever as you say he is?”  
  
John’s fingers paused on the buttons of his shirt, and he made sure that he had Mary’s eye contact before answering. “He's a genius. And I mean that quite literally.” Despite what Sherlock had done to him, and regardless of the other horrible things John might say about him, he would never let anyone question Sherlock's brilliance in his presence. It was the one thing he was determined to defend, no matter what.  
  
Mary considered his words, then asked, “Do you think he’d be able to find out what happened to my dad?”  
  
A few things came together for John. Mary was never upset talking about her mother. But if this had something to do with her _father_ , that would definitely explain her agitation. He stood from the bed and came up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and pressing his mouth to her neck. She smelled clean and tasted lovely. “If anyone could, it would be him. Do you want me to ask for you?”  
  
Mary put down the brush and leaned back against his shoulder. “Maybe. Let me think about it first.”  
  
She guided his hands up to her breasts, and sighed under his touch. John thought she had the perfect sized tits, just the right fit for the span of his fingers. He placed another kiss on her neck, and watched their reflection in the dresser’s mirror.  
  
“Thanks again for making tonight bearable,” he said. “I admit, I was sort of afraid he’d rip you to shreds, but you were amazing.”  
  
She smiled. “I told you not to worry. I can handle myself.”  
  
John chuckled as he thought back to the end of the meal. “You even got him to _eat_ for fuck’s sake. How the hell did you do that?”  
  
She turned fully in his arms to face him, and bit her lip as though she were trying to suppress a grin. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but…” She paused and traced a finger along his arm. “I have a _lot_ of experience dealing with stubborn children.”  
  
John snorted, and then he laughed outright with the truth of it. Mary laughed with him. She made it sound so simple, and in that moment everything seemed possible. Maybe John could have his life here, with Mary, and still be friends with Sherlock. God, he hoped that was true.  
  
He quickly shucked the rest of his clothes and together they fell into bed.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to my two betas, thisprettywren and breathedout. It's like being in the middle of a sexy smart threesome. I'm a very lucky author.
> 
> And thanks to those who have been following along! I know WIPs are a pain, and it means a lot.

He still felt it: that heart-stuttering shock of recognition, the relief, the attraction, the anger. The desire to place a hand on the small of Sherlock’s back just to feel his warmth, just to make sure he was actually there and alive. The conflicting instincts to walk right back out the door, and never to let Sherlock out of his sight again. John felt it every single bloody time he came home to find Sherlock sitting there. It didn’t matter that John was expecting it. It didn’t matter that a few days had passed and he should be used to the idea by now.  
  
It was ridiculous that he should have to cycle through these emotions every time he walked into his own fucking flat. It wasn’t fair to him. And it certainly wasn’t making things easier with Mary, who’d been acting distant ever since that night at dinner. She continued to wear that damn bracelet, refusing to talk about it, and whenever John mentioned Sherlock’s name—which was far too frequently—she would fiddle with the pearls, sliding them around her wrist. Whatever was bothering her, Sherlock was a part of it. John reached a decision, and the fact that he hadn’t reached it sooner was probably another sign that there was something wrong with him.  
  
He walked to the telly, turned off whatever program Sherlock had been watching, and stood in front of the screen to make sure he had Sherlock’s full attention.  
  
Sherlock looked up with a carefully blank expression. His eyes darted over John’s face and body before dropping back down to stare at the blank television screen behind John’s legs. “Before you tell me whatever it is you’ve decided, you should know that your judgment is always at its worst when you’ve had a bad day at work.”  
  
It was true that work had been miserable, but John didn’t take the bait. He didn’t want to be distracted from his current purpose. “Right. We can’t keep living together. I’m giving you a week to find your own flat, and then you need to move out.”  
  
John was expecting frustration, an argument, an insulted roll of the eyes. He wasn’t expecting…well, he didn’t expect Sherlock to look _sad_. It almost, _almost_ , put a dent in his resolve. John wondered, not for the first time, what Sherlock had been through and how the intervening years had changed him.  
  
Sherlock pulled his knees up to his chest, making him look like a reprimanded child. “Why, is Maria trying to get rid of me?” he asked.  
  
John rubbed a hand along his face and sighed. “You know perfectly well that her name is Mary, and no, this isn’t about her. This is about the fact that it’s not healthy to be living with an ex-boyfriend.”  
  
“Ex-boyfriend?” Sherlock repeated, testing out the words and clearly disliking them.  
  
“Yes, Sherlock, ex-boyfriend.” He pointed a finger to Sherlock’s chest. “That’s what you are. We were in a relationship, and now we’re not. And I know you don’t have a lot of experience with this, but exes don’t move in with each other.”  
  
Sherlock looked down and picked at the hem of his trousers. “I don’t see why our past sexual history should have any bearing on our current living arrangement.”  
  
John stared in disbelief. Past sexual history? Was that the extent of what their relationship had meant to him? “I’m not talking about sex, you fucking cold-hearted wanker! I’m talking about…” What, romance? Affection? Love? John found he couldn’t discuss it any more than Sherlock could. That was a territory he wasn’t ready to cross into. He shook his head. “No, actually, I’m through talking. I was happy to give you a place to crash, but starting tomorrow you need to find somewhere else to go. You can’t stay here.”  
  
He walked to the kitchen without waiting for a response, and started making dinner. This was the right decision. He _knew_ it was. And yet the thought that Sherlock would soon be gone, so shortly after his return, made his heart constrict. Clearly, John was doing a shit job of letting go and moving on. And that was all the more reason why Sherlock had to leave.  
  
That evening passed like the few nights before it: quiet and tense, the air humming with the things that weren’t being said. John caught up on medical literature while Sherlock poked at his laptop, staring at John when he thought he wasn’t paying attention. It was weird and uncomfortable, and John couldn’t understand why he felt as though he’d miss it.  
  
***  
  
Wednesday meant therapy, which John had been dreading all week.  
  
It must have shown in his face, because the moment he sat down, Ella took one look at him and responded by closing her notebook and placing it on the floor. Thank god for that. She knew how uncomfortable he was with her note taking, though he never explained the reason why. No need to upset her with Mycroft’s frequent breaches of confidentiality and ethics, not when she was probably unaware of them. Better to let her think him paranoid and untrusting.  
  
Today he decided to take an extra precaution. John tapped a finger against the armrest and said, “Promise me you won’t write down anything from this session. Not even after I leave.” The thought of Mycroft getting his hands on it was terrifying.  
  
Ella raised her eyebrows in surprise, but after a moment she nodded. “Okay. I promise.”  
  
After that, words deserted him. It had only been a week since they last met, but his entire world had been turned upside down in that time, and he didn’t know where on earth to begin. He wasn’t convinced he wanted to discuss it at all. It seemed safer to keep his emotions on permanent lockdown where they belonged, but Ella would make him take them out one by one and put names to them, and he wasn’t sure he could handle that.  
  
God, he hated therapy. It wasn’t until he actually needed it that he ever remembered that fact.  
  
For a few minutes, they just stared at each other. Ella wasn’t pressing him yet; she knew that sometimes he needed the space to gather his thoughts. Although today, he would much rather avoid his thoughts altogether. John considered walking out and rescheduling for another time, but it wasn’t likely to get any easier if he waited.  
  
“Would you like me to start guessing?” Ella eventually asked.  
  
John glanced out the window, where the overcast sky was painting everything in grey. “I _really_ don’t want to talk about it,” he said. “Just so you know.”  
  
“It’s your hour, John,” Ella replied. “We can talk about anything you like.”  
  
John scoffed. It was a nice thought. Last week, they’d discussed some minor quarrel he had with Mary over something he could no longer remember. But now, there was only one thing, one _person_ in his thoughts and it was amazing how it eclipsed everything else. He couldn’t have invented a different topic if he tried.  
  
It felt like ages before he finally let the words slip. “It’s to do with Sherlock.”  
  
His voice very nearly shook on that name. Damn. He frowned and lowered his eyes to his lap, hating the way they prickled as though ready to form tears at a moment’s notice. There was something about being in this room that turned him grotesquely fragile. It held too many memories of coping just after Sherlock’s death—disappearance—no, _death_ , and it was too easy to remember that vertigo, the feeling of teetering on the edge of falling apart.  
  
He took a deep breath and splayed his fingers against his thighs, bracing himself. This was nothing like three years ago, he remembered. It helped to focus on his anger, which drowned out everything else and made it easier to regain control.  
  
Clenching his hands into fists, he made eye contact with Ella and said, “It turns out he’s not actually dead.”  
  
“Sorry, _what_?” Ella said, her eyes going wide and the professionalism suddenly dropping out of her voice. She collected herself quickly enough, blinking and folding her hands in her lap. “Maybe you should start from the beginning. Take your time.”  
  
So he did. He told her everything: from Sherlock's unexpected reappearance, to their dinner with Mary, to last night's decision that he should move out. John still didn't know the exact reasons for Sherlock's three-year deception—he still didn't _want_ to know—but he had a few guesses, and he shared these as well. Sherlock had gotten himself into something dangerous, something that required him to disappear. Maybe he thought he was being protective. Maybe he was just being selfish.  
  
The explanation took the better part of their hour, punctuated as it was with pauses as John stalled, and tripped on his words, and spent long minutes just staring at London's depressing sky.  
  
Afterwards, Ella began asking him questions that were mostly variations on, “How do you feel about…?” He tried to be honest, but John’s answers were mostly variations on, “I don’t know.” He could see that they were getting nowhere.  
  
Their hour was almost up when Ella finally asked, “Do you think you would rather be with Sherlock than with Mary?”  
  
“What? No!” John shouted, for some reason shocked and resentful that she should even suggest it, though it was a perfectly reasonable thing to ask. And really, wasn’t it the question that both Mary and Greg had danced around? But John wasn’t even allowing himself to entertain the thought. As far as he was concerned, there was no choice in the matter, end of story. “Mary is— _perfect_ , and I love her, and Sherlock is a fucking prick who fucked me over.” John winced at his language. “Sorry.”  
  
“You’re allowed to swear,” Ella reminded him.  
  
“I’m happy with Mary,” John continued, calming down. “There’s no way I’d ever get back together with that bastard, but, I just—that doesn’t mean I don’t care about him. He’s still important to me.” Saying it out loud made him realize how true that was. Sherlock had been there when John had nothing else, and he’d made civilian life bearable. Not just bearable—worthwhile. Things had been so good back then, when they were simply flatmates solving crimes. Before they got _involved_.  
  
Maybe that was the problem, then. Not Sherlock’s death, but the relationship that had preceded it. John never should have made that first move, and he definitely should never have fallen in love. Everything would have hurt so much less if he hadn’t.  
  
“We started out as friends,” he said out loud. “Now everything is complicated, and it's—I miss that. Having him as a friend.” He shrugged. “But I’m not sure it's possible to go back to that.”  
  
Ella considered for a moment. “I think whatever you decide, it's going to take a long time to rebuild what you had. It won’t be easy for him to regain your trust.”  
  
John sighed. He couldn’t imagine giving his trust to Sherlock ever again. He didn’t understand why he’d ever trusted him in the first place.  
  
Before he left, Ella asked him if he wanted to schedule an extra appointment before next Wednesday, but John flat out refused. One hour of this per week was quite enough.  
  
***  
  
“How was therapy?” Sherlock asked, his tone derisive, when John came home that evening. He was sitting on the couch watching telly, wrapped in his new robe, his laptop resting open on his thighs. This had become more or less his permanent position in the flat. John wondered if he even moved during the day.  
  
“A bloody waste of time,” John mumbled as he hung up his coat. He knew, objectively, that Ella had done a lot for him over the years, but sometimes it felt so pointless. He didn’t like talking about his problems when he should be _doing_ something about them instead. Sherlock looked ridiculously pleased at John’s response, in that “I told you so” way, which should have made John angry. Instead he could feel his own answering smile. “Shut it, you. You won’t get me to stop going.”  
  
“I suppose it’s a pleasant way to pass an hour,” said Sherlock lightly, still smug.  
  
John ducked his head to hide his grin. These days, he lived for small moments: a shared joke, or a familiar exchange. Anything that felt like normalcy in the confusion his life had become.  
  
He took his usual seat and joined Sherlock in watching some dull fishing documentary. This was ridiculous, he thought after about two minutes. Sherlock would be moving out soon; they should be spending this time talking, trying to patch things over as best they could, not sitting in silence, watching whatever was on. Maybe therapy had helped him sort out his priorities after all, because the anger he’d kept so close to his heart no longer seemed useful. He didn’t want to stay angry forever. He wanted to move past that. He wasn’t ready to forgive Sherlock—not by a long shot—but he was willing to try and rebuild the friendship.  
  
He reached for the remote, and switched off the television. Sherlock didn’t complain; he gave John a nervous look instead. With his righteous indignation temporarily shut down, John felt guilty that he could so easily provoke that reaction. Sherlock wasn’t supposed to be unsettled by anything. Apparently John was the exception.  
  
“What did you do today?” he asked as a safe way to start a conversation. God, that made them sound like a married couple.  
  
Sherlock shrugged and looked back to the blank television screen. “This.”  
  
So John was correct; Sherlock _was_ watching programs and surfing the internet all day. It just seemed…wrong. That wasn’t the Sherlock John used to know, who put bullets in the wall if he went a few days without a problem to solve. He should be bouncing off the ceiling in agitation by now. John furrowed his brow and wondered why Sherlock seemed so calm. No, not calm exactly—sedated, distant.   
  
“No case, then?”  
  
For some reason, this earned him an angry scowl.  
  
“No,” Sherlock replied contemptuously. “No case.”  
  
There was something in Sherlock’s voice that made John ache. “Why don’t you phone Lestrade?”  
  
Sherlock clenched his jaw. “He made it clear that he could no longer allow me to assist investigations without jeopardizing his job.”  
  
Of course. That made sense. John felt thoughtless for even suggesting it. “Well, I guess if you want a private practice again, you’ll have to let people know you’re alive.”  
  
“I did,” said Sherlock, suddenly lifting his computer and giving it a shake like he was furious at it. “I posted an announcement to my website, and no one is responding.”  
  
His website? “I thought your domain ran out ages ago.”  
  
“I renewed it.”  
  
John stared at him, baffled. Marketing was never Sherlock’s strong suit, but for a genius, he really didn’t understand how the internet worked. Or maybe it just went back to not understanding people. “Sherlock, it’s been _three years!_ You can’t expect anyone to be checking the non-existent website of a deceased man.”  
  
Sherlock slammed his laptop shut, and tossed it onto the cushion next to him. Then he swung his gaze toward John, and his eyes brightened as though he’d just realized something important. “ _You’re_ not deceased.”  
  
“Well spotted.”  
  
Sherlock ignored the sarcasm. “People still visit your blog. You need to inform them that I’m alive.”  
  
The thought of even opening his blog again… John looked away and swallowed against the sudden tightness in his throat. “I can’t.”  
  
“Of course you can. It doesn’t even need a title, just a single sentence. I’ll write it for you.” It was the closest Sherlock had ever come to pleading.  
  
And John wanted to do this for him, help him find a new case to prevent him from spiraling into boredom and uselessness and who knew, possibly drugs, but he really couldn’t bring himself to type out a single word. Not yet. He was still trying to heal his wounds, and Sherlock was essentially asking him to open them publicly. “I’m sorry, Sherlock.” He was. He really was. “I can’t. Maybe…I don’t know, maybe when…” He couldn’t finish that sentence, because he didn’t know when. He didn’t know what it would take for things to ever be right between them again.  
  
The brief fire in Sherlock’s eyes went out. He didn’t look angry or upset. John almost wished he would. It would be more bearable than this uncharacteristically vacant stare. Sherlock hunched his shoulders and dropped his eyes to his laptop.  
  
“I’m sorry,” John repeated.  
  
“It’s fine,” said Sherlock, even though it clearly wasn’t. They were both silent for a few minutes before he added, “I saw…what you wrote.” He coughed slightly. “On your blog. Last year.”  
  
A harsh, inappropriate laugh left John’s lips. The last thing he ever wrote was an account of Sherlock and Moriarty’s final series of conflicts, leading up to the fall. He’d tried to fill in the details as best he could, despite the sizeable gaps in his knowledge. But the entry wasn’t about the facts. It was about Sherlock. He had written it to quash, once and for all, any last doubt that the man might be a fraud. More than that, he had wanted to give Sherlock the tribute he deserved. John had tried, with his inadequate words, to explain what the world had lost that day—what he, personally, had lost.  
  
Now he was morbidly amused at the thought of Sherlock, very much alive, reading his own eulogy. Had he found it overly “sentimental?” Was he flattered? Did it make him the least bit sorry for leaving? After all, John had all but confessed his undying love to the internet. And yet it hadn’t been enough to bring Sherlock home.  
  
Suddenly, the thought was no longer funny at all. John looked away and rubbed his jaw. “And what did you think of it?” he asked.  
  
At first, Sherlock didn’t say anything, which was actually a pretty clear answer. It was probably the first thing John had ever written that Sherlock hadn’t felt the need to insult. Finally he said, “It was good.”  
  
There was so much meaning in those three words, an entire conversation they weren’t ready to have. “Took me two years before I could even say anything,” John added softly.  
  
He could see Sherlock nod out of the corner of his eye. “First you had to prove to yourself that I wasn’t a fake.”  
  
John blinked. The statement was so incredibly wrong, and spoken with such assurance, that at first he wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “Wait, what?” He dropped his hand and leaned forward in his seat, catching Sherlock’s gaze to see if he was actually being serious. Sherlock’s confused frown was answer enough.  
  
Fucking hell. He meant it. He thought it had taken John two years to make a decision that in reality had taken less than two seconds. He thought John had actually contemplated Moriarty’s lie. After everything they’d been through together, and the trust that had once existed between them, how could Sherlock honestly think that John was so _blind_? So thick that he’d just trust anything the papers told him, anything _Sherlock_ told him, in the face of everything he knew and had once loved about this man?  
  
It was such a slap in the face that it brought John’s anger right back to the surface. “Let’s get something straight, Sherlock. I know you think I’m an idiot, but I never _once_ believed you were a fraud. Not for a moment, do you understand me?” He wanted to point out that Sherlock only became a fraud _after_ his jump, but that was beside the point.  
  
Sherlock regarded him as though John might be hiding something. “But when Moriarty—”  
  
“Fuck Moriarty!” John shouted. He squeezed his eyes shut and ran a hand through his hair. “God damn it, Sherlock, I used to _care_ about you! You think some criminal mastermind had the power to change that?”  
  
Sherlock’s confusion slowly turned to shock. Yes, he had actually believed that. John almost didn’t know whether to be offended or to feel sorry for him. “Then why did you wait two years to write about it?” Sherlock asked.  
  
John gave a pained, incredulous laugh and clutched the armrests of his chair. What a typically Sherlock thing not to understand. “Because it fucking _hurt_! Because I was mourning my best friend and my partner, and it took two years of therapy just to get my head on straight. Does that make you happy, by the way? Knowing how easily and thoroughly you fucked me up? You did a better job of it than the war.”  
  
Sherlock was legitimately speechless, and god, that was insanely satisfying. Their conversation wasn’t supposed to go like this, but John couldn’t help it. He needed to know that Sherlock grasped the magnitude of his crimes. He wasn’t sure how much guilt Sherlock was even capable of feeling, but whatever the amount, he was determined to rip it out of him.  
  
After a moment, Sherlock drummed his fingers against his knee and said, “I didn’t expect…” The sentence faltered, and John pounced.  
  
“Didn’t expect what? That I’d actually give a shit that you were dead?”  
  
“I didn’t expect it to take so long. I thought a few months, maybe…at most. I didn’t think…not years.”  
  
“And that makes it okay, then?” John seethed, abruptly standing from his chair. “Fuck you.”  
  
He stormed to the kitchen. Tea, he thought. Maybe he’d calm down with some tea. Enough harsh words had been hurled for one evening, and it really wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to make this _okay_. Yet he couldn’t seem to stop himself from slipping back into attack mode, just like that first night when he’d used his fist in lieu of words. He needed some tea, or another ten hours of therapy, or _something_.  
  
But before he could even set the water boiling, his mobile went off. It was a text from Mary.  
  
 _Are we still on for tomorrow night?_  
  
He could feel the muscles in his back tense. Mary was supposed to be his refuge in all of this, the person he could count on. She’d gone out of her way to prove that. So why didn’t a message from her feel like comfort? Why did the thought of seeing Mary tomorrow only add to his stress? Maybe it was the prospect of spending another evening pretending that nothing was wrong.  
  
His thumbs were poised over his phone, deciding on what to respond, when he heard a forced sigh coming from behind him. He spun around and pinned Sherlock with a furious stare. “ _What?_ ”  
  
Sherlock was looking at the mobile, not at him. His expression was inscrutable. “I can’t imagine what you see in her.”  
  
It was like Sherlock _wanted_ to be knocked to the ground. John shoved the mobile back into his pocket and took two menacing steps forward. “Well, I don’t give a shit what you think.”  
  
Sherlock raised his eyes, and his face was the hardest it had been since his return. Any trace of emotion was gone. “She’s hiding something from you.”  
  
“Right, because _you_ were always so bloody _honest_.”  
  
“Irrelevant,” said Sherlock with a small shake of his head. “You tell her everything, and you hate it when she doesn’t do the same. But it’s more than that.” He stood slowly and faced John full on. John had forgotten how intimidating he could be at his full height with eyes like headlights and words like weapons. It made him realize, by contrast, how demure Sherlock had been acting up until now. “She doesn’t challenge you; she lets you stagnate. She never pushes you because she thinks you’re weak.”  
  
John closed his eyes. Oh god, that hit a nerve. “I’m not weak,” he replied, too quick in his denial. He knew, rationally, that Mary had seen his shoulder wound, and she knew precisely what he was capable of surviving. But she also knew about the frequent nightmares, the trace of PTSD, the years of mourning. The idea that she sometimes thought of him as frail and broken, someone who needed taking care of, was an insecurity he could never quite shake, a vulnerable point of entry that Sherlock had found with terrifying ease.  
  
Sherlock continued as though uninterrupted, his volume gradually increasing until he was almost shouting. “Or maybe she’s just incapable of pushing. Either way, she’ll never be enough for you. You’ve been to war, while she thinks she’s worldly and adventurous just because she goes rock climbing and sleeps with women. God,” he moaned, “she’s so _boring_! How can you stand her?”  
  
John was breathing heavily, his short fingernails biting into his palms. Sherlock had no right, no _bloody right_ to stand in John’s flat and insult him like that. “Mary is the best thing that’s happened to me since Afghanistan,” he snapped. There, for just a moment, John saw Sherlock’s features distort with the pain that John wanted so badly to inflict. He knew he’d regret these words tomorrow, but at the moment he didn’t give a shit. He just wanted to injure.  
  
“You can’t possibly be happy,” Sherlock said.  
  
The words burned through John’s body, because he used to be happy, a lifetime ago. And if he was unhappy now, it was Sherlock’s damn fault. Everything was Sherlock’s fault. He wished they were standing closer together so he could sink his fist into Sherlock’s stomach, _show_ him just how unhappy he was. Instead, he took a deep breath and lied. “Yeah, well, I’m a damn sight happier than I ever was with you. In fact, I was doing just fine before you decided to show up again and make my life hell. So the next time you die, do me a favor and just _stay in the ground!_ ”  
  
John didn’t wait to see Sherlock’s reaction. He didn’t want to see it. He headed straight for the stairs to his room, dimly aware that Sherlock wasn’t moving. There was a ringing in his ears, like the echo of his shouted words, and his hands felt numb.  
  
He was on the top stair, reaching for the doorknob, when he finally heard Sherlock’s response. Because Sherlock always had to have the final say.  
  
“If you prefer, next time I’ll sit back and let you die in my place.”  
  
It felt like a physical blow—John had to support himself against the banister. There it was, then. That was the reason he hadn’t wanted to hear: Sherlock died to save his life. It was a possibility he’d considered, even before he knew that Sherlock was alive, so it wasn’t a complete shock. But to hear it spoken out loud and confirmed…John didn’t know what to do with the knowledge. He didn’t know how to feel about it. It wrapped around his lungs and threatened to choke him, but he took a few steady breaths and opened the door to his room. He couldn’t handle this right now. He pushed it completely from his thoughts. Tomorrow—they’d both calm down, and deal with everything tomorrow.  
  
But the next day, Sherlock was gone.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to breathedout for her big help with this one. And apologies for the wait, but hopefully the chapter length makes up for it? A quick note about updates: I'm sort of a slow writer, but I think I've been averaging about a chapter every two weeks with this fic. I can't guarantee that I'll stick to that schedule, but that's the goal at least.
> 
> This chapter contains explicit sex and some violent imagery.

John sat in his worn chair, clutching a pillow to his chest and his mobile to the side of his face.  
  
“Look, I know I said we were going out tonight, but…could you come over here instead? We’ll get takeaway or something. I just—I need you here.”  
  
Mary’s concern was obvious, even over the phone’s thin reception. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”  
  
“No, nothing happened. It’s nothing. It’s just Sherlock, he—” John paused, his eyes slipping shut. “He left.” _Again_ , he added to himself.  
  
There was a brief silence before Mary answered, “Of course. I can be there in an hour.”  
  
The call ended, and John dropped the phone onto the cushion next to him. He wrapped a second arm around the pillow in his lap, then folded his body to rest his face against it.  
  
When he’d returned home from his shift that evening, John had been fully prepared to apologize for some of the awful things he’d said the night before. But Sherlock hadn’t been sitting in his usual spot. He wasn’t in his room, either, or anywhere in the flat. And the more John had searched, the more things he’d noticed were missing: Sherlock’s laptop; any sign of clothing in Sherlock’s closet; and the human skull that John had left sitting on the mantel for years, gathering dust. For some reason, it was the missing skull more than anything else that made him realize that Sherlock had left for good.  
  
And now John was curled up in his chair, trying pathetically not to panic, because this was the very thing he’d been afraid of. He always knew that Sherlock would leave him again, eventually. But he wasn’t expecting it so soon. He felt a black void opening up inside of him, where Sherlock was supposed to be, and he tried not to consider the prospect of never seeing that face again. He’d already come to terms with that once in his life, and god, he couldn’t do it a second time. What made everything worse was the sure knowledge that it was _his_ fault Sherlock had left without a word. He had told Sherlock he was happier without him, and Sherlock took everything so damn literally.  
  
But Sherlock wasn’t dead, he had to keep reminding himself. He’d simply moved out, like John had requested. He was still somewhere, reachable by text, even if John couldn’t bring himself to contact him. Because did he really have the right to ask where Sherlock had gone? What if Sherlock told him to piss off? Or worse, what if he didn’t respond at all?  
  
There was nothing to be done, really. John had fucked up, and now he had to deal with the realization that Sherlock was back in the land of the living, but that didn’t mean he was back in John's life. And Christ, that hurt so much more than it should.  
  
Tossing the pillow to the side and peeling himself from the chair, John decided that what he really needed was a distraction. He passed the time waiting for Mary by tidying up the flat. Putting everything in its proper place was soothing, and it helped him to avoid thinking of his missing ex. When Mary finally arrived an hour later, he was still a bit shaken but for the most part he felt composed.  
  
He greeted her at the door downstairs, glad the instant he saw her. Mary was someone he could always rely on. She would never disappear on him without explanation. Right now he needed that, and he needed her here because he couldn’t stand his home feeling so oppressively empty. “Thanks for coming over,” he said with sincerity, leaning in for a quick kiss.  
  
“Are you okay?” she asked, searching his face. But John didn’t want her concern. With Sherlock’s accusation of weakness still fresh in his mind, he didn’t want her knowing what a mess he actually was. All he needed was her presence and her stability, and that would be enough.  
  
“I’m fine,” he said, smiling tightly, and trying to make it sound true.  
  
She’d arrived with Chinese food; John took it from her and brought it upstairs. When he opened the door to his flat, for a brief moment he froze on the threshold. After a week of being thrown at the sight of Sherlock in front of him, it was now disconcerting to walk into this room and be greeted by no one. He hadn’t realized how accustomed he’d grown to Sherlock’s presence. He’d taken it for granted that Sherlock would be there for one more week, watching telly on the couch with his computer, accepting John’s abuse until John was ready to let him go. How could he have been so selfish and delusional? He shook his head to snap himself out of it because Mary was right behind him, and brought the Chinese to the kitchen.  
  
“So what happened?” Mary asked as she followed him inside, watching him set the food on the table.  
  
John caught sight of her bracelet, _that_ bracelet, and suppressed a wave of resentment. Did Mary really need to hear every detail of his life? This wasn’t therapy, and he didn’t want to talk about it. If it were Sherlock, there would be no need to ask; he’d just deduce it, and save John the bother. John very nearly said to Mary, “What do you _think_ happened?” but then he caught himself. Mary wasn’t Sherlock, and that was a good thing. There was no reason to snap at her.  
  
“We had a row last night,” he explained, pouring out a glass of water before lowering himself into a chair. “I might have said some things. And when I came home today, all of his stuff was missing.”  
  
Mary sat down across from him. “I’m sorry, that must have been a shock. But you wanted him to move out, right? It’s probably for the best.”  
  
Again, resentment flared, because what did she know about it? Yes, he wanted Sherlock to move out, but not with so much bad blood between them. And now that John knew…well, he wasn’t sure if it changed things to know that Sherlock had died to protect his life. After all, John had never _asked_ for protection. But he couldn’t believe Sherlock would just drop that bomb on him and then vanish. John rubbed a finger against his temple. That was a part of it that Mary didn’t need to know. “For the best. Sure. It just would’ve been nice to have a bloody note or something.” Although, Christ, Sherlock’s last “note,” as he called it, was not something that John wanted repeated.  
  
“You’re sure you’re okay, then?” Mary pressed. “You sounded upset over the phone.”  
  
“I’m _fine_ ,” John repeated, looking her in the eye. He wasn’t actually, but he could take care of himself, and he wanted to make that perfectly understood. “I asked you to come over because the place just felt…empty. That’s all.”  
  
She leaned forward to cover his hand in her own, and her eyes crinkled in a suggestive smile. “I think we can make it feel a bit less empty tonight.”  
  
John turned his hand to stroke her palm and grinned.  
  
***  
  
Later that evening, John found himself pressed against the door of his bedroom, with Mary's bra rubbing against his bare chest as she sucked and nipped at his neck. He wrapped both hands around her arse and yanked her against his half-hard still-clothed cock. God, this was the exactly the distraction he needed. A respite from his useless, consuming anxiety. Mary's body was solid and soft and secure, and John allowed his brain to simply shut off and enjoy it.  
  
That is, until Mary leaned into his ear and whispered, “I don’t want you thinking about him tonight.”  
  
Of course, that just brought Sherlock to the forefront of his thoughts, and John scowled. “Then I don’t want you _talking_ about him,” he countered.  
  
Mary leaned back to study his face, and then she raised an eyebrow. “Talk about who?”  
  
Cheeky. John smirked and reached behind her to unhook her bra.  
  
She stepped away and let it drop to the floor, but before John could place his hands on perfectly round skin, she grabbed his wrists and pinned them against the door to either side of his head. It would have been easy to break out of her hold, but that was beside the point.  
  
“I brought a toy with me,” she said. “Would you be up for that?”  
  
John felt his arousal spike, but despite his body’s obvious interest, he wasn’t sure. He felt like he’d rather be with Mary on her own, without some object separating them. “I don’t know,” he said.  
  
“Come on, John.” Mary angled her hips and pressed one firmly against John’s groin, making his head fall back against the wood and his eyes slip shut. She again leaned in close so that her breath was hot against his ear. “Let me. I can tell you want it. Let me fill you and fuck you until you can’t remember your name.”  
  
John groaned, his cock responding to her words even more than the pressure of her rocking hip. When she put it like that, he couldn’t think to refuse. “God, yes.”  
  
Mary looked relieved as she lowered his arms back to his sides. “Then strip and get on the bed,” she said. “I’ll be right back; I left it downstairs.”  
  
John managed to steal a kiss and a quick grope as she slid past him on her way out the door, then he made quick work of his clothing before moving cross-legged onto the bed. Before Mary, John had never even _heard_ the word pegging. He still marveled that he could learn new things about sex so late in life. Their first time with Mary’s strap-on had been a couple of months into the relationship, and it had been intense beyond words. John had nearly wept at the sense-memory of being penetrated, something he had never experienced before Sherlock, and something he thought he would never feel again. It was powerful. He came within minutes. Now it was something they usually saved for special occasions, something that never failed to get John off, although the potency had diminished somewhat since that first time.  
  
He understood why Mary brought it with her tonight. When something was bothering John, one of Mary’s solutions was to fuck it out of him, and it worked surprisingly well. Though he wasn’t sure how it would work tonight. And he wondered if there was more to her motivation this time around. Was Mary trying to replace thoughts of Sherlock’s cock with her own? Was she trying to prove that she could satisfy John just as well as Sherlock could? Or maybe John was reading far too much into it. And there he was, thinking of Sherlock again. He closed his eyes, gave his prick a few slow strokes, and tried to focus on that instead.  
  
A moment later, he heard her footsteps on the stairs. When Mary reentered the room, John wasn’t surprised to see that she was fully nude and strapped in. His erection twitched at the sight. God, he loved having a girlfriend with a cock. It was dirty and perfect. He wondered if his younger self would be scandalized by that thought, and decided that the answer was probably yes. There was so much about his life that his younger self never could have predicted, and this was actually the least of it.  
  
Mary approached the bed and stood over him, while John smoothed his palms against her hips and breasts. Sometimes he would play with her fake cock as well, silly but still erotic in its shade of plum purple, but tonight he just wanted to focus on the parts of her that were real. He sucked a nipple into his mouth, and enjoyed the sound as Mary’s breath hitched. Mary then hummed and ran her fingers through his hair. “Hand and knees, love,” she said.  
  
John turned and assumed the requested position, by now fully hard in anticipation. A hand rubbed against his arse and lower back, making him shiver, and a moment later, he heard the snap of a bottle behind him. When a slick finger reached into him, he closed his eyes and sighed. Fuck, this was going to be good. After the week he had, he bloody well deserved it.  
  
The first two fingers went in beautifully, sending sparks up his spine and leaving him aching for more. But at the introduction of a third finger, something felt off. Instead of opening up, he could feel his body tensing against the larger intrusion. That was a bit unusual. By this point he would normally slip into a different mental state and instinctively take whatever Mary had to offer. Now he found himself trying to push her out. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, consciously willing his muscles to relax, because he’d done this a million times before and there was no conceivable reason to be nervous.  
  
“All right?” Mary asked, her fingers stilling inside of him. John was too busy concentrating to respond with words, so he nodded his head, and Mary continued. A few moments later, with John feeling blissfully stretched, she rubbed his back and declared him ready. “You should see your wide open arsehole, just begging to be filled.” For someone who spent all of her time around children and didn’t even swear as a result, Mary had an amazingly filthy mouth in bed.  
  
John groaned and pressed his forehead against the mattress. “God, just fuck me already.”  
  
“Gladly,” Mary agreed, and John felt the head of her prick rubbing against his slicked arse. Once again he started to tense, but he assumed that once Mary pressed inside, everything would fall into place like it always did. Slowly, carefully, she eased into him, and John’s hand immediately wrapped around his cock.  
  
“Fuck,” he moaned, stroking himself as Mary filled his body and his thoughts. It had taken him longer than usual to get there, but this was what he needed. The combination of ache and pleasure felt fucking brilliant. When Mary started moving, he let it all go, the worries and confusion, and floated on nothing but physical sensation.  
  
“That’s it, John. You look beautiful taking my cock right now. You’re so good at this, aren’t you?”  
  
She gripped his hips hard, but not quite hard enough, and increased her pace. John pressed back against her, wishing distantly for _more_ , something he couldn’t name. She adjusted her angle, and John cried out when she found his prostate. It pulled him even further into his own body.  
  
Mary continued rocking into him while John let out a stream of grunts and low noises. His hand never stopped moving on his cock. He was rock hard and getting close, but he didn’t want to come just yet. He wanted to stay like this forever, suspended in arousal, his arse too full and the pleasure too intense to think of anything else.  
  
It used to be this way with Sherlock. Sherlock would fuck him hard, but not hard enough to make him come, and John would lose himself and just take it for as long as Sherlock wanted. During the day he placed his life in Sherlock’s hands, and it wasn’t so different to offer up his body at night, trusting Sherlock to do exactly the right things to it. In sex, just like everything else, Sherlock knew him entirely, inside and out.  
  
That’s when John’s eyes shot open, and he realized he was about two seconds away from coming at the thought of being fucked by Sherlock Holmes. He pulled his hand away from his cock as his brain whirred back to life, but Mary’s dildo was still thrusting into him.  
  
“Mary,” he said, starting to panic.  
  
“You like that, love?” she replied, hitting his prostate again.  
  
The problem was that it still felt so good, even with everything inside of him screaming for it to stop. “Wait,” he moaned. “Don’t.”  
  
“Don’t what? Do this?” And she snapped her hips, hard, shooting off sparks and making his cock throb.  
  
John gasped. Mary pulled back, but before she could plunge forward again, John managed to catch his breath for long enough to shout, “Mary, _stop_! Fucking stop, okay?”  
  
Mary stilled. The moment seemed to stretch forever, with Mary remaining inside of him, and John teetering right on the edge of hysteria and orgasm. “What’s wrong?” she asked.  
  
“Pull out,” said John, gritting his teeth. “Please, just pull out. _Now_.”  
  
“Okay, okay.”  
  
He felt the intrusion sliding out of him, and he groaned. He was still turned on, and he felt disconcertingly empty when the head of the toy finally popped out. Collapsing onto the mattress, he tried to get control over his thoughts, willing his hard on to abate, breathing slowly.  
  
A hand landed gently on his shoulder, and John recoiled. “Don’t,” he said. Why couldn’t he just have a moment to himself? The last thing he needed was Mary trying to _comfort_ him right now. The hand pulled away.  
  
John wasn’t sure how long he lay there, but it was long enough for his breathing to even out and his cock to grow soft again. God, he was a fucking mess. The pegging had been a terrible idea. And the sad thing was, it wasn’t the first time he’d thought of Sherlock while having sex with Mary. It was simply the first time he’d _panicked_ over it. What was wrong with him? Did he think it was okay to fantasize about someone who was dead, but not someone who was missing? No, he didn’t want to think about it at all. The purpose of tonight was supposed to be distraction, something other than this constant obsessing.  
  
He slowly rolled over and sat up on the edge of the bed. Mary was watching him from the corner of the room, her arms crossed in front of her, still naked but without the strap-on. John expected her to look concerned, but instead she looked upset. Well, no, she looked distant and closed off, which let John know she was upset. He decided she had every right to be. He sighed and motioned to her.  
  
“Come here,” he said.  
  
At first he wasn’t sure if she would move, but after a moment’s hesitation, Mary strode forward. John stood from the bed and wrapped his arms around her waist, placing a soft kiss on her mouth.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “Let’s do something else instead.”  
  
“Like what?” she asked, sounding uncertain.  
  
He turned them around and eased Mary onto the edge of the bed, then kneeled on the floor between her legs. He pressed her knees apart, seeking permission with his eyes. Mary let her legs fall open and placed a hand in his hair, stroking his scalp encouragingly, although when she smiled it didn’t quite extend to her eyes. John put that out of his mind. He pressed his nose against her dark nest of hair and breathed in, savoring the scent of something distinctly female, before reaching out with his tongue. Mary responded with a sigh, leaning back and angling her cunt towards his face.  
  
This was good. This was safe. John lost himself in the scent and taste of Mary’s folds, stroking himself lightly as he worked. He licked circles around Mary’s clit, pressed his tongue into her, varied his speed and technique. It took a little while before he could get Mary moaning on top of him, but that was okay. That just gave him more time to bury himself in his girlfriend’s cunt, where he belonged. And it gave him less time to think about anything else.  
  
***  
  
Crap. He was running late for class.  
  
It was the same class John kept missing every week, and he wasn’t even sure if he knew in which room it was being held. He rushed down unfamiliar streets as fast as his legs would carry him, hoping to figure it out once he got there.  
  
He turned down one road, and then another, and there was St. Bart’s looming in the distance. John’s pace slowed as he approached. Instead of relief, a sense of dread slowly washed over him, a nagging worry that gradually evolved into an all-consuming fear. Something unspeakable was waiting for him there. Something he couldn’t face. He needed to stop, turn around and just run the other way, but he kept moving closer, and the only thing he could do was stare straight ahead at the building’s entrance and repeat to himself, _don’t look up. Just don’t look up._ If he could keep his eyes to the ground until he made it through the front door, then he knew it would be okay. Everything would be fine.  
  
But he was still a block away when his eyes, against his will, glided up the walls to the roof of the building. It was just a glance, just for a second, but the sight of Sherlock standing on the ledge froze him to the spot. He knew instantly what was about to happen, and it was his fault. He never should have looked. Looking up was what set these events in motion, every single time. It took a few agonizing heartbeats before he found his voice and managed to scream, “Sherlock, don’t! _Please_!” but it was too late. Sherlock couldn’t hear him, as distant as he was up on that impossibly high ledge.  
  
When Sherlock jumped, he fell in slow motion like a leaf, his arms flapping in the air and an expression of horror on his face. John tore his eyes from the sight and tried to run to the spot where Sherlock would land, putting every ounce of will into the movement of his muscles, but his body suddenly refused to cooperate. He couldn’t force himself to move. He looked down, and immediately saw the reason: his right leg had been torn apart by shrapnel, with tattered bits of muscle and bone showing through the bloodied skin. The mangled limb twisted uselessly underneath him, shooting pain up through his nervous system, but John gritted his teeth and managed to drag himself forward. The injury wasn’t important. He had to get to Sherlock. That was the only thing that mattered.  
  
It seemed to take an age before he managed to reach the place where Sherlock must have hit the ground. The sight of it made him sick. There was blood _everywhere_ , splattering the walls of St. Bart’s, flooding the pavement and dripping down into the street drains. John could _smell_ it, thick in the air, surrounding him and choking him. Everywhere he looked, the only thing John could see was blood-soaked concrete—  
  
But no body. The body itself was missing. John had arrived too late, and Sherlock Holmes was gone.  
  
***  
  
John awoke in a cold sweat, and his hands immediately sought out his leg, making sure it was still there, still whole. His brain caught up with him a moment later, and he eased back onto the mattress, breathing heavily. Strangely, it was the first nightmare he’d had since Sherlock’s return. His sleep over the past week had been blissfully dreamless, and he wondered why his psyche had waited until now to torture him. John rolled over, reaching blindly to his right, but all he felt were the sheets pulled back over a cooling indentation.  
  
Now John was fully awake. "Mary?" he called, his throat scratchy. No answer. He sat upright and looked about the room, which was illuminated by the first rays of light coming through the curtains, but Mary was nowhere to be seen. Still feeling shaky from his dream, John pushed himself out of bed.  
  
He winced a little as he shuffled barefoot down the stairs, the ache in his arse bringing back unwelcome memories of last night. When John reached the bottom, the first thing he noticed was that Mary’s coat was missing from its peg by the front door. His brain disconnected at the sight, and briefly he felt unmoored. Mary was gone. He was alone. His pulse began to quicken, but he forced himself to relax, to be rational. Mary was still around somewhere. She would never leave without telling him. He trusted her.  
  
And sure enough, he found a note in the kitchen explaining that they were out of coffee so she was getting some down the street and that she’d be back in a few minutes. He sank into the chair and took a deep breath, rubbing at his eyes and trying to shake off the lingering effects of his nightmare. The familiar handwriting before him helped. Mary was full of tiny, considerate gestures that didn’t seem like much, but after being with Sherlock, they meant the world to him. Which didn’t say much about his previous relationship.  
  
He was still in his pajamas staring at the note when the front door opened and closed, and Mary entered carrying two paper cups.  
  
“Good morning,” she mumbled, sounding nothing like her usual chipper morning self.  
  
John accepted the coffee and thanked her. Mary didn’t respond; she just dropped into the other kitchen chair and sipped her drink.  
  
“What’s wrong?” he asked.  
  
“I was just talking to Mrs. Hudson,” said Mary, not quite making eye contact. “You didn’t tell me where Sherlock moved to.”  
  
John blinked. Then he felt suddenly lightheaded, and he was glad that he was already sitting, because the energy seemed to drain from his limbs. Mrs. Hudson knew where Sherlock was? Oh thank god. John was dying for any tiny scrap of news, though he was also afraid of what he might hear. He tried not to sound too eager when he said, “That’s because I have no idea. Did she tell you where?”  
  
Mary looked up at him, lips pressed together and nostrils flared with anger. John rarely saw her this way. Most of the time she was unflappable, but when something brushed against her moral code she looked like this: burning with indignation.  
  
“You know what, I don’t care if he’s rude or arrogant. I don’t even care if he openly hates me. But I can’t stand the way that man _jerks_ you around.”  
  
What was she talking about? Was she referring to something specific, or Sherlock’s general tendency to act without asking? Whatever it was, John didn’t like this sudden criticism of Sherlock’s character, or the implication that John couldn’t look out for himself. The area was especially touchy because it had always been like that between them, from the very beginning. Sherlock dragged him around the city without explanation, performed experiments on him without consent, and although it probably hadn’t been healthy, John never put up much of a fuss. When it came to Sherlock, going along with things was usually worth it in the end, something that no one else seemed to understand. “That’s just how he is,” he tried to explain. “He’s not manipulative. Not intentionally, at least.”  
  
“Don’t you dare defend him,” Mary warned. “He shouldn’t treat you that way.”  
  
John felt his patience running thin. “What way? What did Mrs. Hudson tell you?”  
  
Mary took a sip of coffee before answering. She looked tired, and John wasn’t surprised. Dealing with Sherlock was exhausting.  
  
“He’s downstairs, John. He moved into the bloody basement.”  
  
“What?” John shouted. Relief flooded through him, and maybe that was the wrong reaction to have, but he couldn’t help it and he didn’t care. A huge weight lifted to know that Sherlock was still nearby. It meant Sherlock hadn’t abandoned him after all, not really. It also meant that Sherlock was safe. And the thought of Sherlock being right there underneath his feet, all along, was so completely absurd that John wanted to let out a giddy laugh. He only restrained himself because Mary wasn’t finding this funny in the slightest.  
  
“I guess that explains how he found a place so quickly,” he said instead, unable to completely hide a smile.  
  
Mary didn’t smile back. She shook her head in disbelief and gave him a pointed stare. “He at least should have told you.”  
  
She was right, of course. But then again, she hadn’t been there. She hadn’t heard the things that prompted Sherlock to leave in the first place.  
  
***  
  
It felt strange to be knocking on the door to the flat that had been empty for as long as John had lived upstairs. For a moment he questioned why he was doing this, knocking on Sherlock’s door at all. If Sherlock had any interest in seeing him, he would have made some effort to inform John that they were neighbors. Or had he expected John to read the clues and figure it out on his own? It didn’t matter. Either way, it was ridiculous that they should be in the same building without acknowledging each other. Besides, John still needed to assuage his guilt from the other night. And maybe, if he were being completely honest, he just needed to see Sherlock to make sure he was actually there and okay.  
  
John heard a shuffle behind the door, and then it opened onto Sherlock’s narrowed eyes and guarded face, the final assurance that last night’s dream wasn’t real. There was a bruise still vibrantly colored along the edge of his cheekbone, but soon it would fade entirely. For some reason that made John sad.  
  
“What do you want?” Sherlock asked.  
  
John hadn’t been expecting a warm welcome, and he clearly wasn’t going to get one. “Can I come in?”  
  
Sherlock considered it for a moment, and then he shrugged, walking away from the door so John could let himself inside. John closed the door behind him and followed Sherlock down the stairs, wondering what he would find. Before he could look around, he was hit by a cloud of foul smoke that made his throat sting.  
  
“Jesus, it’s like a chimney in here.” Only then did he notice the cigarette burning between Sherlock’s fingers. “I thought you quit.”  
  
Sherlock very deliberately brought it to his lips and gave a long drag. “I un-quit.” The word was slowly enunciated, punctuated with a sharp, defiant ‘t.’ “What does it matter to you? I didn’t contaminate your precious flat.”  
  
John was disappointed, both as a doctor and a friend, to see Sherlock smoking again after they had worked so hard to get him off the patches. And yet he couldn’t quite silence the part of his brain insisting that Sherlock’s soft lips pursed around a cigarette, the look of rapture that accompanied his inhalation, was incredibly sexy. He squeezed his eyes shut and erased the thought; he was getting damn tired of contradicting himself. And he couldn’t afford to think like that, not after last night.  
  
Sherlock walked to the middle of the room and folded his legs under him so that he was seated on the floor, then began flipping through a newspaper. Now that John had a chance to take in the surroundings, he noticed that there were newspapers everywhere, haphazardly scattered. Tons of newspapers and nothing else. Actually, it was a bit disconcerting; the flat was empty apart from clutter, unfinished with peeling wallpaper, and it didn’t look much different from the last time he had seen it. The only thing missing was a pair of trainers.  
  
John considered finding his own patch of ground, but he was still a bit sore. If he sat down, it would probably show, and he really didn’t need Sherlock deducing his sex life right now. He opted to remain standing. “So,” he said, “were you planning on telling me you were down here?”  
  
“I didn’t think you’d care to know,” Sherlock muttered.  
  
“Right, I guess I should be used to your disappearances by now.” Despite himself, John couldn’t quite keep the aggression out of his tone.  
  
Sherlock looked up. For an instant there was hurt in his eyes, but maybe John imagined it, because it quickly morphed into a look of impatience. “I’ll ask again. What do you want?”  
  
John rubbed at his forehead then let his hands drop to his sides. He felt extremely uncomfortable standing there, towering over a seated Sherlock, unwelcome in this smoky bomb shelter of a flat. He should probably just apologize and leave. “Look, what I said the other night…”  
  
“You said that you were happier when I was dead,” Sherlock helpfully supplied without sentiment.  
  
John winced. “Yeah, well I didn’t actually mean it. I was angry, and I wasn’t thinking, and I shouldn’t have said those things.” He turned out his palms and raised his shoulders a bit. “I’m sorry.”  
  
Sherlock studied him for a moment, his expression so shuttered that John had no clue what he was thinking. Then he returned his attention to the newspaper. “Apology accepted.”  
  
John stood there for a moment in silence. Was that it? Was that a dismissal? Were they sorted now, or did his weak apology make no difference? He felt like he should probably go, but he wanted to stay, just a little while longer at least. A small trace of guilt was still eating at him, and he couldn’t just leave Sherlock alone in his spartan flat. He gestured around the room. “How are you actually living here? You have no furniture.”  
  
Sherlock quickly glanced up, silently thanking John for stating the obvious. “There’s a bed. And it’s not as though I have options.” There was no bitterness in his voice, just a statement of fact. “I’m legally incapable of renting or owning property, and Mrs. Hudson is the only landlady in London who isn’t going to run a credit check.”  
  
“Why can’t you…” John started to ask, but understanding struck him a moment later. Of course Sherlock couldn’t rent property. He was still legally _dead_. John had seen the death certificate himself, something he’d completely forgotten about. With all the time he’d spent thinking about Sherlock’s stunt, he clearly hadn’t considered the full ramifications, and John was suddenly overwhelmed with the magnitude of it. “Jesus. So what are you supposed to do? I mean, how does that work, exactly?”  
  
Sherlock didn’t seem concerned. “Mycroft is sorting it. He assures me that it will be a long, tedious, bureaucratic process. Fortunately, my brother has a talent for—” Sherlock grimaced— “ _paperwork_.”  
  
John frowned. “You can’t just live like this while you wait. If you wanted I could, I don't know, lend you a chair or something at least.”  
  
“I don't need a _chair_ ,” Sherlock snapped. “I need a case.” As he spoke, Sherlock stubbed out his cigarette in a teacup next to him that was apparently functioning as an ashtray. There was hardly a pause before he reached into a pocket, pulled out a box and a lighter, and brought a replacement to his lips.  
  
“Sherlock, go easy on those.”  
  
“Will you shut up about the smoking!” Sherlock shouted, slamming a hand against the floor. His frustration and desperation were suddenly palpable, his guard completely down. “I don’t have a case, at this rate I’ve no idea how I’m supposed to find one, I don’t have you, and I barely have a place to live. This stick of tobacco is the only thing keeping me from bashing my skull against Mrs. Hudson’s wall. So unless you’ve come down here with something for me to _do_ , I suggest that you leave now and spare me your medical opinion.”  
  
Sherlock finished by placing the cigarette between his lips, shoving the newspaper off to the side, and reaching for his nearby laptop. After that, he was content, it seemed, to ignore John entirely. Silence settled in the wake of his outburst, broken only by the tapping of keys.  
  
John, meanwhile, stood completely still, gaping as Sherlock's words twisted in his gut. Something snapped into place, something that should have been obvious long ago, but he’d been unable to see it until now. The thing was, he knew exactly how Sherlock felt. John knew, better than anyone, what it was like to lose everything and rebuild a life from scratch. God, he'd done it. Twice. John remembered that particular torture as clearly as he remembered the ache in his leg.  
  
He wasn't sure why he hadn't made the connection before. Sherlock didn’t form attachments like normal people, so maybe John had assumed it would be easy for him to throw his life away. Or maybe John had mentally drawn a distinction between throwing everything away voluntarily and having everything taken. But now that he knew the reason for Sherlock jumping, that distinction seemed weak at best. Sherlock hadn’t been given much of a choice. That made it much harder to believe, as much as he wanted to, that Sherlock was now in a hell of his own making.  
  
John had been doing such a good job of keeping sympathy at bay, saving all of his pity for himself and leaving none for the bastard who left him heartbroken for years. Now, with Sherlock chain smoking on the floor in this depressing basement, he felt it finally seeping through his defenses. Especially after hearing those unexpected words tucked into the middle of Sherlock’s tirade: _I don’t have you_.  
  
Sherlock took another drag, clicked on something, and exhaled. John was seized with the urge to move closer, to remove the cigarette from his mouth, run a hand through his cropped hair, and assure him that everything was going to be fine.  
  
Instead, he remained where he stood, distant as ever. There was only one thing he could offer, really, and it wasn’t even his to offer. Mary would probably be furious. Then again, it was her idea in the first place, and Sherlock needed it, so maybe she would understand.  
  
Fuck it. He’d worry about the consequences later. John took a deep breath and said, “I might have a case for you.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for another long wait. And here is another long chapter to make up for it. It's looking like the final chapter count for the fic will definitely be eight, by the way. Thanks so much to thisprettywren and breathedout for their help. All the case stuff in this chapter is VERY loosely stolen from _The Sign Of Four_.

This was a terrible idea. John felt it the moment he sat down in the cafe.  
  
Mary had agreed to let Sherlock take a look at her case. She had done it reluctantly, and only after making it quite plain that she wasn’t acting for Sherlock’s benefit—or for John’s. Her sole motivation was to find out what happened to her father. John was just grateful the decision was reached without an argument, and he only felt a tiny bit guilty for hiding the fact that Sherlock already knew about the case. That John had all but promised it to him without a word of permission from Mary.  
  
So now here they were. The three of them sat around a small table in a trendy new coffee shop, chosen specifically for its neutrality. Mary was broadcasting her unhappiness with a stony gaze. Despite her agreement, she clearly did not want to be there. And Sherlock, the one who had been so desperate for something to solve, looked just as bitter about the situation. They had both dropped the relatively friendly pretense of last week’s dinner, and as John sat there, frayed and tense, he wondered if the air between them would ignite from the resentment alone.  
  
God, what had he been thinking, bringing them together like this? He could have sworn his decision made sense at the time. John took another sip of his too-sweet coffee and figured they better get it over with.  
  
“Go ahead,” he said, nodding to Mary.  
  
“I'm not sure where to start,” she replied.  
  
Sherlock all but rolled his eyes at the cliché, but one look from John, and John could see the sarcastic remark die on his tongue. At least Sherlock seemed to understand that this was a favor. If he stepped out of line, John and Mary could very easily stand up and walk out, taking the case with them. “I would _imagine_ you’d start with your father,” said Sherlock with only a hint of derision. “When did you last see him?”  
  
John found Mary's hand on the tabletop and gave it a light squeeze. He'd heard this story before, and he knew Mary didn't like to discuss it. Yet she sounded eerily calm when she answered. “When I was thirteen, but that wasn’t when he disappeared.” She paused long enough to take a slow breath. “My mum died when I was little. My dad, he…well, he was hardly fit to be a parent. It wasn’t long before he ran off and left me with my aunt—my mother’s sister, that is. So I only ever saw him once a year at most. And the last time was when I was thirteen. I remember he took me to a carnival.”  
  
Mary smiled tightly at the memory, but the rest of her account was spoken in a detached monotone. In the early days of their relationship, when she’d first talked about her family with John, it hadn’t been like this at all. She had been warm and open, embarrassed by her sadness, and they had spent a long evening sharing secrets and personal histories. He missed nights like those. Being with Mary had been so much easier than being with anyone else, but he didn’t feel that closeness now. Mary was keeping her expression shuttered and her back stiff, and John didn’t know how to cross the distance he could feel stretching between them.  
  
“I was supposed to see him again on my fifteenth birthday,” she continued, tapping her fingers lightly against the side of her cup. “He and my aunt hated each other, so he _never_ came to the house. I always had to go meet him somewhere. So, this time, I had a letter from him with the name of the hotel where he was staying, and what time I should arrive for lunch. I made it there five minutes early, and the front desk _told_ me he had checked in, but…” Mary’s eyes, which had been steadily fixed on Sherlock, drifted off to the side. “He never showed. I waited for hours.”  
  
“Do you still have the letter?” Sherlock asked.  
  
“Of course not,” Mary snapped, returning her focus with heat in her gaze. “I was furious at him. The first thing I did when I got home was to take the letter and burn it.” She closed her eyes briefly. John couldn’t tell if she wanted to prove to Sherlock she could be objective, or whether she was just trying to hide any weakness. Either way, she clearly wasn’t comfortable sharing this. John rubbed her hand and felt another stab of guilt for putting her in this position. When Mary spoke again, her voice was slow and restrained, eventually reverting to its even tone. “Of course, I regretted it later. I didn’t realize it was the last time I’d ever hear from him.”  
  
Sherlock responded with a disappointed pout. “You weren’t suspicious at the time?”  
  
“It wasn’t the first time he’d stood me up, so no. I didn’t think much of it at all, not until later that year when the child support to my aunt never arrived. My dad may have been an irresponsible bastard, but…it was the first time he ever forgot to send a check.”  
  
Sherlock held out his hand. “I assume that was when the police investigation was launched.” Mary stared at the hand and blinked, until Sherlock sighed and added, “You have the report in your purse.”  
  
Mary glanced at John, and John caught the flash of surprise in her expression before she reached into her overlarge bag to remove a manila envelope. John watched it with curiosity as it passed hands. He knew Mary had a copy of the investigation, but he’d never actually seen it in person. He hadn’t much cared to until now. After Sherlock left, he’d assumed his days of crime solving were at an end, and for a while he even avoided reading about local crimes in the paper. Looking into the details of Mary’s case would have left him feeling bereft and useless. But now that Sherlock had returned, John felt something he hadn’t experienced in years, something he hadn’t expected to feel again: the lure of an unsolved mystery.  
  
His interest grew as Sherlock skimmed the report, faster than anyone could possibly process words.  
  
“Well?” asked John when a silent minute had passed. “Any thoughts?”  
  
Sherlock looked up at John and grinned. It was conspiratorial, as though he knew exactly how much John had missed this, the first stage of a case when it was nothing more than a jumble of facts that Sherlock would soon weave into a neat pattern. John quickly smoothed out any interest that might have shown on his face. “Several. But I hate to draw conclusions until I have all the information.”  
  
“That _is_ all the information,” said Mary. “It’s not much, but that’s all the police were able to dig up.”  
  
“I’m not the police,” Sherlock snapped. He narrowed his eyes and gave Mary an appraising stare. “And you’ve yet to tell me how this relates to your new favorite piece of jewelry.”  
  
John turned to Mary in time to see the way her posture froze, her tension and reluctance confirming Sherlock’s accuracy. So the bracelet _was_ related somehow, though John couldn’t imagine how. The only thing he knew was that Mary still wouldn’t talk to him about it. Her silence on the matter had been a continuing sore spot, and now he felt a nagging desire to discover, finally, what Mary had been keeping from him. But at the same time, he recognized that this wasn’t the place. Not in front of Sherlock, at least.  
  
John wavered for a moment, caught between defending her secrecy and wanting her to divulge. Then he found himself thinking it would be a shame to bring the case to an end before it even started. God, was he really that selfish? Willing to sacrifice Mary’s privacy for a thrill? No, he was better than that. John leaned towards her and whispered, “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want.”  
  
Mary was still staring at Sherlock, meeting his challenge. “No, it’s fine,” she said, and to John’s complete shock, she unfastened the bracelet from her wrist.  
  
Sherlock took it from her. Ever prepared, he removed a magnifying lens from a pocket, inspecting each pearl from every angle.  
  
“I don’t actually know if it’s relevant,” said Mary cautiously. “My aunt received it by post two days before I came to visit her, but the package was addressed to me. And when she saw what it—” There was a pause. “Well, she waited for me to open it, and she thinks…” Mary frowned and looked off to a corner of the cafe. She blinked a few times before continuing, the control over her voice starting to waver. “She could be wrong. I don’t know. But she thinks it’s possible that it…used to belong to my mum.”  
  
John let the words sink in, slowly registering the implications, hurt that Mary would feel the need to hide that from him. He scooted closer and placed a hand on her back, ducking his lips to her ear. He wished Sherlock wasn’t here, sitting across from them and surely listening in.  
  
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, voice low.  
  
Mary sighed and turned toward him, lifting a hand to brush his cheek. “I couldn’t, John. I don’t know. I didn’t want to think about it, to be honest. It’s just…I can’t stop wondering who _sent_ it. Think. Who would have been holding onto something that belonged to her all this time? I mean, if it’s true, if my aunt is right and it really is my mum’s, then—then what if…” She didn’t finish the sentence, but John was finally starting to understand.  
  
“You think your dad could have sent it to you?”  
  
Mary squeezed her eyes shut and leaned closer. “My god, I’m _terrified_ he might have sent it to me. I was so certain he was dead up until a few weeks ago. If I’ve been wrong all this time, if he’s just been—I don’t know, _hiding_ from me instead…”  
  
She trailed off again, her eyes fluttering open in embarrassment as though she suddenly registered her own words. John had to look away as a wave of nausea passed over him. As cruel as it sounded, John hoped that Mary’s father was indeed deceased. For her own sake.  
  
He avoided looking at Sherlock, not wanting to see his reaction, but then maybe the parallel had been lost on him entirely. Because Sherlock chose that moment to interrupt, sounding bored. He placed the pearls on the table in front of him. “Should I assume you thoughtfully burned the package this arrived in?”  
  
Mary was still turned to John, so he could see her rein in her anger before reaching back into her bag. What she pulled out was a white, beat-up, letter-sized envelope—a poor choice for mailing what was probably a valuable piece of jewelry. She set her mouth and handed it over to Sherlock.  
  
He snatched it from her, closely examining the handwriting on the front. When he flipped it around, his eyebrows shot up. “There’s a return address.”  
  
“Oh, _very_ clever,” Mary responded, her voice dripping with unmistakable sarcasm. “I never would have noticed.”  
  
“Then why are you bothering me with this?” Sherlock shouted, loud enough to turn a few heads around them. He threw the envelope back at her. “Obviously the person who sent this to you knows something about your father, and they provided a very simple means of contacting them. The fact that you’ve _neglected_ to do so means that you aren’t actually interested in learning what happened at all. You’re just wasting my time with your sob stories and self pity.”  
  
That was too far. Without thinking, John pushed his seat back and leapt to his feet, but Mary grabbed his wrist before…well, he wasn’t sure what he was planning to do, but it would have caused a scene. He hadn’t realized how tightly wound he was, just waiting for Sherlock to say the wrong thing. And accusing Mary of theatrics was beyond the pale. John breathed sharply through his nose, staring angrily down at Sherlock, but Sherlock met John’s glare with his own threatening look. They were apparently past the stage where Sherlock was willing to sit there and take it. If John threw a punch right now, Sherlock’s expression made it clear that he would punch back.  
  
“Apologize,” said John.  
  
“For what?” Sherlock spat back.  
  
“John, calm down.  It’s okay.” Mary tugged him back into his seat and held his hand tightly. “He’s right, actually. I told you, I didn’t want to know, at first, but I—I’ve had some time to think about it.” She turned her attention back to Sherlock. “I _am_ ready to find out what happened now. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here. I don’t know who sent this to me,” she said, picking up the bracelet from the table and clasping it back around her wrist, “and I don’t know if it’s my dad, or someone who knew my dad, or…or maybe it’s nothing at all. I’m not even sure you can help, really. But I guess, if I’m going to show up at some stranger’s address, I might as well bring someone along who knows what they’re doing.”  
  
Sherlock regarded her for a moment. Even John had to admit it wasn’t much of a case, and it was the sort of thing Sherlock once would have dismissed out of hand. So it probably spoke to Sherlock’s level of desperation when he stood and swept the coat off the back of his chair.  
  
“Fine. Let’s go.”  
  
***  
  
The cab dropped them off in front of a row of posh brick buildings, each of them set back from the road, tastefully hidden behind fences and hedges. Sherlock sniffed the air like a dog as they approached the house marked fifteen, sweeping his gaze up and down the street. John wondered what he was thinking, if that remarkable brain had already picked up on clues and reached conclusions, and it might have felt just like old times if not for the fact that Mary walked ahead of them. John found he had to keep reminding himself that this case was personal, that it was his girlfriend’s father they were investigating. He was here to support her, not to get caught up in the anticipation of the unknown. Besides, there was nothing particularly exciting about the quiet, affluent neighborhood in which they found themselves.  
  
Still, his heart thrummed as they approached the entrance and Mary pressed the buzzer.  
  
There was a tense silence before the door opened. Behind it stood a well-built man in his early thirties, with blond hair that looked slightly less than natural and a nervousness about his eyes. They darted from Mary, to John, to Sherlock, to Mary again.  
  
“So I’m guessing you’re Mary Morstan?” he asked before any of them had a chance to speak.  
  
Mary took a half step back, and John hooked a hand around her elbow, feeling overwhelmingly protective.  
  
“I am,” Mary replied.  
  
The stranger nodded. “Yeah, I was wondering if you’d show up. Who’re these two, then? You’re not cops, are you?”  
  
He squinted at Sherlock as he posed the question, but Sherlock just smiled in a way that would seem convincingly friendly to anyone who didn’t actually know him. “Far from it,” he said, offering his hand. “Sherlock Holmes. Personal friend of Mary’s.”  
  
John bristled at the lie, unconsciously giving Mary’s arm a squeeze. But Sherlock never did anything without a reason and John chose not to contradict him. Of course, if Sherlock wanted to hide the fact that he was a detective, his past brush with fame might make that difficult. John watched the stranger closely for signs of recognition, but no—there was no hint of surprise at shaking the hand of someone who had very publicly killed himself three years ago. John supposed most Londoners had little interest in some tabloid flash in the pan.  
  
There were awkwardly polite greetings all around, the stranger introducing himself as Ted Sholto. The name wasn't familiar to John, and one glance at Mary showed that she hadn't heard of him either.  
  
“So,” said Sholto, still leaning in the doorway as he lowered his voice, “I guess you came to ask about that bracelet.”  
  
“It was from you, then?” Mary asked, the disappointment in her voice well hidden. Her fingers touched the pearls at her wrist, something that had become a nervous gesture.  
  
“Yeah well, you know, I thought you might like to have it. I wasn't sure if you'd want to know the whole story, but I guess if you're here, then…”  
  
“What story?” asked John. There was something about this man that already rubbed him the wrong way, something about his overly-familiar tone, and the way he was conducting this conversation on his front porch.  
  
Sholto craned his neck forward and lowered his voice even further. “I mean, what happened to her dad and everything.”  
  
Next to John, Mary’s breath caught. “You—you know what happened to him?”  
  
“Yeah, but…” Sholto glanced back over his shoulder into the darkened house. “Not here, all right? Do you mind going for a walk or something? I’ve been trapped in this fucking house for a bloody month now. I need some air, you know?”  
  
Without waiting for an answer, he stepped outside and eased the door shut behind him. He looked much happier once this was done, and his voice returned to its full volume. “Come on, then.” He set off down the tree-lined block at a quick pace, and the three of them followed behind. John walked alongside Mary, rubbing her back and trying to offer some small comfort for whatever was to come, but Mary stared resolutely forward at the back of Sholto’s head. Sherlock trailed in the back.  
  
“I hate this fucking neighborhood,” Sholto was saying, casting scornful looks at the buildings they passed. “Smug, rich bastards, the lot. You should know, that isn’t my house back there; it’s my dad’s. I'm only staying with him while he’s sick, or at least _claims_ to be sick. Don’t ask me what he’s got, because I haven’t the faintest. Which is fucking ridiculous, because how the hell am I supposed to be taking care of him, then? But anyway, I’m here until he recovers. Or finally croaks. Whichever. If he _is_ planning to die, I just wish he’d get it over with already. He won’t let me out of his sight for more than two bloody seconds at a time. I’m a grown man, you know? I can only take that babysitting shit for so long. I've got a life, too.”  
  
“What is it you do, Mr. Sholto?” asked Mary in a deadpan that would make it clear to anyone that she was only being polite, and barely that.  
  
“He’s unemployed, and has been for months,” said Sherlock.  
  
“Between jobs,” corrected Sholto with an annoyed glare over his shoulder. “And with the job market all fucked up like it is, I’ll tell you, if the old man _does_ decide to die, it wouldn’t hurt to have my share of that money I know he has stashed away.”  
  
John’s dislike was increasing with each passing second. And he could sense Mary becoming more anxious the longer Sholto jabbered. But Sholto showed no interest in talking about her father, and he didn’t seem to be taking them anywhere in particular. John tried breaking into his monolog several times as they traveled block after block, but Sholto was incapable of keeping his mouth shut for any extended period of time. He was so focused on ranting about his own father, the last job he lost, and a million other complaints, that John wondered if he even remembered why they were all there. He lost his patience entirely when Sholto rounded a corner onto yet another identical residential street, silent except for a few birds, and still without a person in sight. Increasing his pace, John grabbed Sholto by the shoulder and spun him around.  
  
“I think you need to stop and tell us exactly what it is you know,” he said in his best threatening tone.  
  
Sholto lifted his hands in the air, and had the audacity to look affronted. “Okay, all right. Calm down. I’m going to tell you everything I can. I just needed to get the fuck away from that house first. I mean, my dad’s going to be furious I was gone for _this_ long, but fuck him, you know?” Sholto leaned back against one of the sparsely leafed trees growing out of the pavement and addressed Mary. “Okay, well, this involves a bit of back story I guess. You’re sure you want to know?”  
  
Sherlock stepped forward so that he stood on John’s right. “Obviously she’s sure.” When John looked over, he could see Sherlock working his jaw in irritation. He wondered why Sherlock had been so silent up until now, patiently letting Sholto rant instead of demanding immediate answers.  
  
Sholto shrugged. “I guess I should ask you then: do you know what your dad used to do? For a living, I mean?”  
  
Mary crossed her arms in front of her. There was a crease etched into her forehead. She was holding herself motionless, and although John still had a hand at her back, it was like touching a mannequin. “Not really, no. I know he used to travel a lot.”  
  
“Then you probably don’t know that your father and mine used to work together,” said Sholto. Mary shook her head slowly. “There were four of them, actually. It was my dad, your dad, and then the two others are in prison now, apparently. So, they ran this operation together, that, uh…well, I think some of what they did was actually legitimate. You know, importing, sales, boring shite. But a lot of their business was…” Sholto waved a hand in the air, as though looking for the right word, while his eyes darted to the houses nearby. Finally, he looked at Mary again and let out in a harsh whisper, “Well, fucking _drugs_. Smuggling and shite. Other illegal stuff, I’m sure, but mostly the drugs.”  
  
John silently cursed Sholto’s complete lack of tact. He moved closer to Mary, looking to see how she was taking this revelation, but she took a small step away from him in turn, her eyes on Sholto, her forehead creased in concentration.  
  
“You said there were four of them working together,” Sherlock chimed in. “Do you know the names of the other two?”  
  
“Why the hell would I know that?” Sholto asked with a frown. “It was a long fucking time ago. Although…” He paused briefly, looking thoughtful. “I sort of remember my dad talking about someone called…what was it, Little? Or Small, or something.”  
  
“And what about my father?” asked Mary. Her voice was quiet and clear, her arms still crossed and her eyes now fixed on the pavement by her feet.  
  
Sholto cleared his throat and rubbed his arm. “Right. Yeah. Well, ever since my dad decided he’s dying, he’s been confessing all this shite that I really don’t want to hear. He keeps saying he needs to clear his conscience or something—I don’t know. I didn’t even think he _had_ a conscience, to be honest. So who knows? Maybe he’s dying after all.  
  
“Anyway, when I first show up here about a month ago, he calls me into his room one night and starts going on and on, like a crazy person, about—I don’t know, how everyone makes mistakes in their lives, and he’s made some big ones, but he never meant to hurt anyone. That was the big thing he kept repeating, how it wasn’t his fault that things went wrong. I told him I didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about, and that’s when he confessed about the drug smuggling, like it was really important I should know about it. He told me how two of his partners ended up in jail, and one of them ended up dead, but he kept saying that it wasn’t his fault.”  
  
A sharp intake of breath, almost a sob, came from Mary as she brought a clenched hand to her mouth. Her face had gone white. There it was then, confirmation that her father was dead, revealed in such a crass, unexpected manner. John immediately moved closer and sought out her hand—when had Mary moved so far away?—but Mary shook her head sharply and angled her body away, letting him know she needed space. She lowered her hand and took a slow, steady breath. “What else did he say?”  
  
Sholto shuffled his feet a bit, finally looking embarrassed at being the bearer of devastating news. “He—okay, well, apparently when the other two guys got thrown into prison, it sort of looked like my dad might have set them up or something. He _says_ he didn’t, that it was all a mistake, but he also lies through his teeth, so who the fuck knows. Your dad—er, Mr. Morstan—had just gotten back into the country. He was at his hotel when he found out what happened. So he came straight to my dad’s place to confront him about it. There was this big argument, and then—well, okay, this is what my dad claims, but who knows if the fucker’s telling the truth or not. He says that Morstan suddenly had a heart attack or something in the middle of their fight and—well, just keeled over.”  
  
Mary squeezed her eyes shut.  
  
“No one reported it?” asked John, his entire attention focused on Mary.  
  
“I’m sure he thought he’d get pinned with murder,” said Sholto, “and even if he could prove it was an accident, I guess he was afraid of getting busted for the smuggling like his partners. So he says he dumped the body.” John watched Mary wince.  
  
“So anyway, he _claims_ he’s been feeling guilty about it since, which I think is bullshit. But that’s when he showed me that bracelet.” Sholto pointed to Mary’s wrist, but Mary covered it with her other hand, hiding it from view. “It was the only valuable thing the guy had on him, and my dad knew he had a daughter somewhere, so he says that’s why he held onto it. He’s the one who had your address. He said he’s thought about sending it to you for years, but he could never bring himself to actually do it. So the next day, I snuck into his room and—yeah, I sent it for him.” He ran a hand through his hair, then shoved both hands into his pockets. “I mean, I know what it’s like to have a father who abandons you and fucks up your life. I thought you deserved to have it.” He looked at her expectantly, as though waiting for gratitude or camaraderie, as though he’d had no hand in her current state of distress. And true, it was Sholto’s father who was the real villain in all of this, and his son was merely guilty of being spectacularly bad at sharing painful news. But that didn’t keep John from wanting to break his face in.  
  
Mary continued to stare at the ground, and although she didn’t sound at all grateful, she still said “thank you” in a dead voice.  
  
A contemplative silence followed, a moment of mourning for Mary’s father, long dead after all. John stood with fists clenched at his sides, watching Mary from what felt like a great distance. He knew better than to offer any comfort until it was asked for. So he waited.  
  
Of course, it was Sherlock who eventually broke the silence. “Well then. We should probably be getting back to your house about now.”  
  
John turned to him, prepared to tell him off for being so incredibly rude, but he was stopped short when he caught sight of Sherlock’s hungry expression. There was a light in his eyes, and John realized Sherlock had heard something in Sholto’s story that the rest of them had missed. The case wasn’t solved, then. There was something else happening. John’s stomach fluttered at the thought.  
  
“Yeah, okay,” said Sholto slowly. “Now that you know what my dad said, I guess you want to talk to him yourselves. I mean, he probably won’t answer any questions, but I guess it’s worth a try.”  
  
“Yes,” Sherlock agreed. “An excellent idea. Come, we’ve wasted too much time as it is.”  
  
Sherlock turned on his heel and led the way back through the residential streets by which they’d come, brimming with an excitement John hadn’t seen since his return. As John trotted behind, he wondered what else they were about to learn. Would Sherlock be able to determine the exact cause of John Morstan’s death, even after so many years had passed and all the evidence gone? It seemed incredible, but John hoped so. Sholto’s vague account of the accident—or possible murder—could hardly feel like closure to Mary.  
  
When they arrived back at number fifteen where they’d started, Sherlock practically bounded up the steps to the front door, then bounced on his toes with impatience as the rest of them caught up. “Mr. Sholto, is there anyone else staying in the house with you?”  
  
“No,” he said frowning. “It’s just me and my dad. Why?”  
  
Sherlock ignored the question as Sholto unlocked the door. He followed at Sholto’s heels into the dark foyer, then began scanning the floor and walls as soon as the light was switched on. “Your father’s room is upstairs?”  
  
“Yeah,” said Sholto, now thoroughly bemused by Sherlock’s erratic behavior. But John, still well acquainted with Sherlock’s methods even after so many years, felt a cold weight settle in his stomach. This wasn’t about Mary’s case. This was something new. It was happening _now_ , whatever it was, and John wondered if he should have brought his revolver.  
  
Sholto made his way up the stairs, motioning behind him to be quiet, oblivious to the tension which John felt increasing by the second. He stopped in front of a door at the end of the upstairs hallway, and turned to the three of them.  
  
“I’ll go first, see if he’s awake and tell him who you are. I’ll warn you now, though, he’s an unpleasant bastard. He won’t want to see you.”  
  
With that, Sholto turned the knob, opening the door a just a crack. Then he froze. And a moment later, he stumbled backward, caught in Sherlock’s arms as his knees gave out, and let out the words, “ _Oh fuck_ ,” in a shaky whisper.  
  
A sick, familiar feeling, and also a wave of calm focus, came over John as he stepped around Sherlock and Sholto and pressed open the door. It was a large master bedroom, illuminated by the late afternoon sun that streamed in through a side window, but John hardly registered these details as he took in the ghastly wide-eyed expression and blue-tinged lips of the man propped up in the center of his king sized bed. As John rushed forward, he already knew there was nothing to be done. Even before he was close enough to search for a pulse, he knew that this man, gray-haired with skewed reading glasses still perched on his nose, was dead.  
  
Then again, thought John as he took the man’s limp wrist between his fingers, pulses could lie.  
  
He shook away the memory that threatened to surface, and replaced the man’s arm in the position he’d found it. He knew what to do next. There were noises coming from behind him, cries and whispers and movement, but John didn’t pay them much attention as he set to work. He hadn’t been at a crime scene for years, and his work at the surgery rarely put him in the face of death anymore. But even if he was out of practice, this felt like second nature: noting the tint of the skin, inspecting the pupils, searching the body for marks and abrasions. The procedures he had taught himself out of books, back when he’d realized that forensic medicine had somehow become his full time job, returned to him easily. He only wished he had a pair of gloves so he could be more thorough.  
  
It was a few minutes later—he thought; he’d lost track of time—when he reached and verified his conclusion. With a growing sense of alarm, John stood up straight, jumping when he felt a warmth at his back.  
  
“Well, Doctor?” John turned around to find that Sherlock was positively beaming. “What are your thoughts?”  
  
“He was murdered,” John quickly explained. “Happened…I don’t know, _minutes_ ago. Sherlock, what if—”  
  
Sherlock caught John’s darting eyes, and made an impatient gesture. “They’ve already escaped. The house is perfectly safe.”  
  
“You’re sure?”  
  
“Completely.”  
  
John nodded and slowly relaxed his defensive stance. He wondered why it was so easy to believe Sherlock’s assurance, even after John had sworn never to trust him again. But this was Sherlock’s arena, and John trusted on instinct. If Sherlock said they were safe, John couldn’t help feeling safe. Then John realized something else Sherlock had said. “Wait. They?”  
  
“Yes. They.” Sherlock skipped the explanation, and gestured to the body. “Go on. What else did you conclude?”  
  
“It was an overdose,” said John. He indicated the marks around the victim’s neck. “He was being strangled as he died, but that wasn’t the cause of death. And based on the damage around the puncture wound in his left arm, not to mention the bruising everywhere, I don’t think it’s too much to assume that the drugs were forcibly administered.”  
  
“It’s not an assumption at all if you look at the facts.” Sherlock grinned, all of his attention on John, which was remarkable considering there was a dead body within reach. John could feel the affection and pride, maybe even respect, that Sherlock never bestowed on anyone else. It was heady, and it made everything, even murder, seem unimportant. John felt himself smile in response. It was the sort of moment he could never properly explain, not even to his therapist: how being in a room with Sherlock and a dead body—with a _mystery_ —held the promise of something thrilling to come. No, it was more than that. It was the promise of something shared. It was some indefinable spark that passed between them, that made death seem small, that made it feel okay to laugh at a crime scene. God, just like old times. Thank goodness no one else was in the room to witness this.  
  
That’s when John suddenly realized the two of them were alone. He shook himself out of the moment and frowned at the door. “Where’s Mary?”  
  
Sherlock’s grin vanished in an instant. “Downstairs, comforting Mr. Sholto I assume.” He stepped around John and leaned over the body, making his own observations and speaking rapidly. “We have approximately five and a half minutes before the police arrive. Fortunately, I was able to stop everyone from calling the authorities so I could contact Lestrade directly.” He dropped to his hands and knees to inspect the carpet, and John moved out of his way. “With any luck, and a fair bit of cajoling, Lestrade will let me stay on the case. But he’s already threatened to force me out of the crime scene once he arrives, so I’ll need to use this limited time effectively.”  
  
John knew he should probably wait with Mary downstairs until Lestrade arrived, make sure she was okay, but as he moved toward the door, he found himself caught up in Sherlock’s work, mesmerized by the purposeful grace with which he moved around the room. He wasn’t sure why he found the sight comforting. He supposed that after all the strain between him and Sherlock, all the reminders, small and large, of how much had changed, it was nice to be in the middle of something so familiar, even if that something was a murder.  
  
“How did you know he would be dead?” John asked as Sherlock inspected the windowsill. Sherlock had somehow anticipated murder even before they returned to the house, John was sure of it.  
  
He wouldn’t have been surprised to receive no answer, but apparently Sherlock was in a talkative mood. “Sholto senior was afraid for his life,” he explained, most of his focus on a spot on the wall. “That much was obvious from his son’s tedious rants. What else would explain the deathbed confession, and the need for constant supervision? Ted Sholto may not have been aware of it, but he was here to provide protection, not medical care.” Sherlock followed a seemingly invisible trail on the ground to the far corner of the room, where under a lamp and a piece of fabric there was a small, opened safe. Sherlock swabbed the interior with his finger and brought it to his tongue. “Sholto’s old partners had been waiting for exactly the opportunity we provided when we coaxed his son out of the house.”  
  
“Sholto’s old partners?”  
  
Sherlock levered himself to his feet, now looking somewhere in the vicinity of the ceiling. “Obviously. Both recently released from prison. They killed him with the drugs they found in this very room, then made off with the remaining stash.” His bright eyes turned to John and flashed with joy. “Even Lestrade should be able to figure out what happened here, and discovering the identity of the two men won’t take long. The real challenge will be tracking them down.” Sherlock’s words burned with possibility, and John could feel the pull in his blood.  
  
Before he could respond, the sound of sirens filled the street below.  
  
John broke his eye contact with Sherlock, and barely had time to turn around before Greg came running up the stairs and burst into the bedroom. “Sherlock, what the hell?” he yelled.  
  
“Evening, Detective Inspector,” Sherlock greeted him with a generous smile.  
  
 _“Out!”_  
  
John gave Greg a sheepish nod as he followed a petulant Sherlock back down the stairs. When they reached the living room area, it was already swarming with the faces of unfamiliar cops. John didn’t know whether to be disappointed or relieved that there was no one he recognized.  
  
Finally he spotted Mary, sitting at the far end of the room and rubbing the back of Ted Sholto, who was seated next to her with his head in his hands. She stood as soon as she saw him.  
  
“John,” she said, her voice quiet and cold. “I’d like to go home now.”  
  
John could read her anger in the set of her jaw, and the trepidation he’d felt at the start of the day now bloomed into a guilty ache. Fuck. In the face of the murder upstairs, he had completely neglected her. He’d left her alone to comfort this grieving wanker, when she hadn’t even had a chance to nurse her own wounds. What was wrong with him? His girlfriend had just discovered that her father was dead, for Christ’s sake.  
  
This was what Sherlock did to people, John thought. He messed with their priorities. Made them insensitive. Then again, maybe John didn’t have anyone to blame but himself. He should have broken the habit of dragging his girlfriends to crime scenes long ago, but look at him. He hadn’t learned a damn thing.  
  
He gave a quick glance toward Sherlock, who was now arguing loudly with Lestrade at the foot of the stairs. The truly fucked up part was that he wanted to stay. He wanted to see this through, maybe write it up, if not for his blog than at least for his own private notes. But Mary was his life now, not Sherlock. He couldn’t let himself forget that.  
  
“Of course,” he said, beckoning. “Let’s go.”  
  
They were mostly silent on the cab ride back to Mary’s flat. John wasn’t sure what he could say to make up for the way he’d behaved. He kept expecting Mary to yell at him for putting her through that ordeal. He _deserved_ to be yelled at, and he wanted her to let it out, knowing how upset she must be underneath her composure. But Mary just kept her hands in her lap and stared out of the window. The one time John tried taking her hand in his, she slipped it back out, and crossed her arms.  
  
“Mary, I—”  
  
“Not now, John,” she cut him off before he could apologize. “I just—I need you to be quiet right now.”  
  
When they arrived at Mary’s doorstep, Mary leaned forward to talk to the cabbie. “You can take him to 221B Baker Street next,” she instructed.  
  
John blinked in surprise. “Can’t I come up?”  
  
Finally, Mary turned to him, and John was surprised to find that her eyes were red. Had she been crying, and he hadn’t even noticed? He felt like an even greater piece of shit.  
  
“Come over—maybe tomorrow, if you want,” she said, leaning forward to plant a kiss on his cheek. “I just want to be by myself tonight. I’m sorry.”  
  
“Mary—” John protested, moving towards her, but the passenger door slammed in his face as he reached out. And the next thing he knew, the cab was speeding away.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love and thanks to thisprettywren and breathedout for their help and infinite wisdom. And extra love and thanks to everyone with the patience to follow along. Please note that the final chapter count has been bumped to nine, and there it shall remain.

In the days that followed, John didn't see much of Sherlock at all. Sometimes he would hear the open and close bang of the downstairs door, and he would imagine Sherlock running around London on his own, chasing down leads, pulling clues out of thin air, not eating enough, and closing in on Sholto's murderers. Without him. Sherlock must have found some way to stay on the case, either helping Greg, or helping in spite of Greg. Or maybe the case was finished. Maybe the two men had already been apprehended.  
  
It was torturous not knowing, but John didn't dare go downstairs and find out. Things with Mary were finally good again, and he wasn't going to jeopardize that.  
  
His reconciliation with Mary hadn't been easy. What began with John's next day apology for abandoning her at the crime scene had quickly escalated into an argument. He couldn't remember the last time he and Mary had yelled at each other like that. And thinking of it now, he couldn’t even remember what the fight had been about. He only knew that it ended after he finally admitted—or rather, once Mary forced him to admit—that fine, _yes_ , he still had feelings for Sherlock. It was a terrifying thing to say out loud. John could envision the look of pain and hatred that would cross Mary's face. He could see how their relationship would shatter, and the hard-won stability of his life would crumble under his feet. But the confession tumbled out, and in the end, Mary hadn't been upset. She kept saying that she just needed to hear it, that they both had to be honest with each other. John tried to explain how much he still wanted to be with her, and Mary said she knew that. She understood.  
  
He wasn't sure how that was possible. In her shoes, John would have walked out long ago. But Mary had never been the jealous sort, and if she thought this was an obstacle they could overcome, than John was sure as hell going to try his hardest. And that meant keeping Sherlock at arm's length, at least for now.  
  
Anyway, it wasn’t like he _wanted_ to have feelings for Sherlock. Not after all this time, all the lies. Not when he had another relationship to protect—a healthier relationship, if he were being honest with himself. If Mary hadn’t pried it out of him, he would have stuck to his denial for as long as possible just to get on with his life. But he and Sherlock had stood together at a crime scene, and John had felt himself being pulled back into Sherlock’s orbit, like something beyond his control, and of course Mary had noticed. It was no longer something he was allowed to ignore. He had to just deal with it, then.  
  
Would he need to explain all of this to Ella? What would she say about it? She probably wouldn't act surprised, John imagined. She'd be smug and knowing. She'd be expecting it. It was enough to make John cringe.  
  
Maybe it was best not to tell her at all. It was Wednesday again, after another impossibly long week, and his therapy session would probably comprise another hour-long recap of events. It was typical of his life that after years of nothing much to share, he now had way too much going on to fit into a single session. That was good, though. If he spent the whole time filling her in on details, there wouldn't be any time left to talk about his feelings.  
  
He shook his head as he gathered up his keys, then felt his stomach lurch when he heard a knock at his door.  
  
Since moving out, Sherlock had never once visited John’s flat. He hadn’t so much as touched the stairs. So what could he possibly want? Was it urgent? Something to do with the case? Or maybe something mundane, maybe he needed to use John’s mobile, borrow a cup of sugar. John had resolved not to spend time with Sherlock, but that was a lot easier when Sherlock wasn’t actively seeking him out. Would he be able to turn him away?  
  
There was another polite rap—too polite—and John realized he'd been standing there frozen, staring at the door handle. He shook himself out of it.  
  
“Sherlock,” he said, as he swung the door open, “this isn't a good—”  
  
He cut himself off when he saw Greg standing there in his work suit, hands in his pockets, a friendly smile on his face. No sign of Sherlock. John tried not to feel disappointed.  
  
“Mrs. Hudson let me in,” he said. “I hope that's okay.”  
  
“Yeah, of course. Come in.” John stepped back, and Greg strolled past him into the sitting room. John wondered why Greg hadn’t called before the sudden visit. He hoped that the intrusion was related to the case. John was desperate to know what had been happening, and it was probably better to hear it from Greg than Sherlock, even though Sherlock would probably have more information. He checked his watch, and estimated he still had another five minutes or so before he he'd be late for therapy. “I'd offer you something to drink, but I'm just heading out the door in a minute. Is this to do with the murder?”  
  
“You're...” Greg turned to him and frowned. “It is, yeah. Is Sherlock around?”  
  
John pressed his lips together, annoyed that Greg should mention him at all. Why did everything have to be about Sherlock? John felt as though he were being relegated back to sidekick, and he heard the bitterness in his own voice when he answered, “No, he's not. He's living downstairs now. Try the basement.”  
  
John held the door open for him, but Greg just shook his head, looking increasingly awkward. “I know, but he was insistent that I meet him here, at this exact time. He said you were coming with us. And he...didn't actually tell you any of this, did he?” Greg asked slowly, barely a question.  
  
John hung his head and pressed fingers to the bridge of his nose. Typical. Sherlock thought that even now he could snap his fingers, and John would come running. And the problem was, he wasn’t wrong. It was all because of that crime scene: John had revealed too much, far too much, and Sherlock could always see through him in seconds. He knew how much John had missed it: being part of a case, a mystery, something dangerous, even if John hadn't realized it himself at the time.  
  
Also typical that Sherlock should have the worst possible timing, because John really needed to get to therapy. It seemed almost deliberate that the invitation should come right as he was headed out the door.  
  
Wait, what was he saying? Of course it was deliberate. Sherlock knew his schedule by now. He knew perfectly well where John was going, and he had sent Greg just in time to intercept him. John let out a frustrated sigh. This was exactly the sort of behavior he should be staying away from, and Mary would certainly call it one of Sherlock's manipulations. What sort of man tried to lure an ex-boyfriend away from therapy? Then again, having an excuse to cancel his session wasn't exactly a hardship. If anything, John considered it a favor. And the fact that Sherlock wanted to keep him in the loop came as a relief, even though John promised himself he wouldn’t get involved.  
  
He spent a minute arguing with his better judgment. But in the end, a choice between solving a crime and talking about his problems wasn’t really a choice at all. Which Sherlock knew perfectly well, the bastard. John looked back up at Greg and relented. “Okay. Let me—let me just make a phone call.” Ella wouldn’t be pleased, but John found that he didn’t really care.  
  
Once he had canceled his appointment, he rejoined Greg in the sitting room, offered him a glass of water, and they both settled in to wait for Sherlock who was, predictably, late. As they sat together, Greg explained how the Met had discovered the identity of the two men, and had been looking for them everywhere. They’d just about run out of leads when Sherlock showed up, claiming he had their address. Sherlock had been working on his own, of course, and John inferred from Greg’s tone that the help wasn’t being discouraged, even though it wasn’t exactly on the record.  
  
“I’m an idiot, I know. I’m risking my job over this, but…” Greg shrugged. “He’s still the best I’ve got. And once he’s seen the crime scene, there’s no stopping him anyway, so I figured I might as well use whatever he finds. I guess nothing much has changed, really.”  
  
John looked away and rubbed his arm. “Some things have changed.” Maybe not for Greg, though. It seemed easy enough for Greg to pretend the last three years never happened. And now Sherlock had his murder to solve, so things must be back to normal for him as well. How nice for them both.  
  
Greg shifted forward with his elbows on his knees. John could tell from his expression that the tone of the conversation was about to change. “How have you been, by the way? I was going to ask at the victim’s house, but by the time I turned around, you’d already left.”  
  
John grimaced. It wasn’t a question he was keen to answer. He was avoiding therapy for a reason, after all. But Greg wasn’t being a therapist, just a concerned friend, and John bit back a sarcastic retort. “I’m fine,” he said. “I’ve worked things out with Mary, and Sherlock’s not living here anymore, so…” He trailed off, letting Greg finish the sentence for himself. _So things are how they should be. So I’m back to the life I wanted._ It was hardly the truth, but Greg didn’t need to know about the persistent ache that now lived in John’s chest, or the hope that if he ignored it for long enough, it would just go away.  
  
“He, er…” Greg looked a bit sheepish as he took another sip of water. “He came by my flat the other night, you know.” John raised his eyes at that. “At first I thought it was about the case, but apparently not. He wouldn’t even talk about it. He said he was waiting on a lead, but he needed something to do in the meantime. And then he…” The corner of Greg’s mouth quirked up. “You won’t believe this.”  
  
“Believe what?” asked John, skeptical. At this point, there was very little Sherlock could do to surprise him.  
  
“He told me how you kicked him out, and then he asked if he could watch my television.”  
  
John stared, mouth slightly agape, as Greg laughed. “I know. I didn’t even think he knew what a telly was, let alone watch one. I said sure, so he put on some crap program, and then ignored me completely.”  
  
It was odd behavior, but Sherlock did plenty of things that seemed odd at the time yet made perfect sense later on. It was probably related to the case somehow. Then again, John knew how much television Sherlock had been watching lately. Maybe he’d grown addicted. It seemed unlike him to look for distractions during a case, and it was especially strange that he should travel all the way to Greg’s flat for the privilege. If he had just asked, Sherlock could have borrowed John’s set. John wouldn’t have minded. He sort of missed watching telly with Sherlock, whose reactions to whatever was on were usually more entertaining than the program itself. John grinned.  
  
“Did he yell at the screen the whole time?”  
  
Greg put down his glass, his expression oddly serious. “No, he didn’t say anything. He stayed for an hour or so, and then he got up and left with barely a word. I didn’t know what to make of it at first. But I think…” Greg paused, and frowned as though he were about to say something unthinkable. “I could be wrong, but it seemed like some Sherlock-version of a social call. I think he was feeling, I don’t know. Lonely or something.”  
  
The idea of Sherlock feeling lonely was for some reason embarrassing to John, and he found himself looking away. There was a time when he would have laughed at Greg’s announcement. He used to think that Sherlock was incapable of loneliness. Even when they were in a relationship, Sherlock always acted like he would be just as happy single, like it wouldn’t make a difference if John were his boyfriend or his flatmate. For days at a time he ignored John entirely. He would fuck John senseless, then immediately afterward continue to insist that it was all just transport. And John put up with it like he put up with everything else, because he understood that Sherlock cared about him deeply without knowing how to show it. But he always assumed that Sherlock’s natural state was to be on his own. Sometimes he worried if Sherlock would one day tire of their little boyfriend experiment.  
  
But he only had to think of Sherlock spending the entire day immobile on John’s couch, waiting for him to come home, or smoking on the floor of his basement flat, and “lonely” seemed like a fitting adjective. His memories of the past two weeks twisted, unwelcome, in his gut, and John could feel his expression darken. If it were true, and Sherlock had returned feeling lonely, how was that in any way John’s problem? _Sherlock_ was the one who left, and even if the initial reasons were noble, he chose to stay away for three years. It wasn’t John’s responsibility to make him feel better after that. So what was Greg implying? That he should be feeling guilty? “Why are you telling me this?” John asked.  
  
Before Greg could answer, the door opened and Sherlock strode into the room, long coat swaying. He didn’t look like a man who was lonely. He looked eager, electrified, gorgeous in a way that John was never quite prepared for, and he flashed John a smug look as though he wasn’t at all surprised to find him sitting there.  
  
“I see you brought an unmarked vehicle like I requested,” he said to Greg. “Good. Let’s go.”  
  
***  
  
The building they pulled up to a few minutes later wasn’t much to look at. It was a squat, utilitarian structure just like the rest of the buildings on the street, but Sherlock pointed to a curtained second floor window as Greg put the car into park and assured them that both murderers were inside. John looked up at the edifice and felt an electric thrill run through him. He was so ready for this.  
  
Although Sherlock seemed just as anxious to start, Greg dictated that they wait for backup to arrive. This annoyed Sherlock to no end. He insisted repeatedly that the three of them were more than enough to subdue the suspects, that every passing second was a dangerous waste of time, and that the presence of more officers would simply alert the two men who were already poised to flee. But Greg was having none of it. He calmly explained that this was police business, and Sherlock was lucky to be here at all. It was the same speech he’d made while relegating both John and Sherlock to the back of the car after Sherlock had insisted on driving.  
  
John wasn’t about to take sides. He was just glad to be along for the ride. He’d left his handgun at home, but he felt invincible even without it, keyed up and ready for the arrest. It didn’t matter to him whether he’d be taking down two criminals single handedly or watching from a distance, as long as he could be a part of it somehow. Just one last time, he wanted the thrill of it, the rush of facing something evil and the closure of bringing it to an end. He wanted to see this through: the conclusion of one more mystery. Anticipation coiled inside of him, adrenaline raced like a drug through his system, and Christ, he missed it.  
  
Tomorrow he’d go back to his actual life, the one without any threat of danger. Sherlock had his crimes to solve and John had a life with Mary. That was the way things should be. But right now there was an arrest to be made, and if this was John’s last opportunity to take part, then he wanted to make the most of it.  
  
A voice finally crackled through the scanner, confirming that everyone was in position, and John felt his pulse quicken. He was focused and prepared for anything. When Greg stepped out of the car, John and Sherlock both moved to follow, but Greg stopped them with a look.  
  
“I don’t think so. You two are staying here.”  
  
John’s stomach dropped in disappointment, and Sherlock scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m practically handing you two murderers. John and I at least deserve to be there for the arrest.”  
  
 _John and I_. It rolled so easily off of Sherlock’s tongue, as though they were still a couple, as though John had done anything to warrant a place behind police lines.  
  
Greg shook his head. “Not a chance. Stay in the car, prove to me you can behave yourself, and I’ll consider letting you in on future cases.”  
  
Sherlock was clearly furious at the ultimatum, but John could see he didn’t have much leverage. He clenched his jaw and looked murderous, but after a brief silence, he spat out, “Fine. But don’t let them hear you coming up the stairs, and make sure you keep someone on the back entrance. Assume that they have an escape already planned. There’s only one firearm between them, but the smaller of the two is an expert shot.”  
  
Greg rolled his eyes. “I _am_ capable of doing my job, Sherlock.”  
  
“We’ll see,” was Sherlock’s predictable response.  
  
So much for being a part of it, then. It seemed the two of them would be waiting out the arrest in the back of Greg’s car, which was not exactly what John had been hoping for, but it still beat therapy any day. At least he’d be able to see the men being led out of the building, get a good look at them. He watched through the car window as Greg and the other officers quietly filed inside, then fixated on the curtains that Sherlock had earlier indicated, wishing he could see past the cloth.  
  
“This is insulting,” Sherlock grumbled next to him.  
  
“What did you expect?” John responded without looking around. If he stayed focused on the second floor window, he could ignore the fact that he and Sherlock had been left alone in very close proximity.  
  
“I expected a little gratitude, not to be treated like some sort of _civilian informant_.” John could hear the frustration in Sherlock’s voice, and for some reason it made him smile. “I went to great lengths to track down practically every drug dealer in the city, and now Lestrade is going to make a complete mess of things, all because of _protocol_. This was all much simpler when I was working alone.”  
  
The smile fell from John’s lips, and he felt a sharp, physical pain in his chest at Sherlock’s words. Sometimes he wished that, just once, Sherlock would think before speaking. John didn’t want to know how happy Sherlock had been on his own. He didn’t want to hear the confirmation that Greg had been wrong: it wasn’t loneliness he’d seen the other night, but boredom. As long as Sherlock had a case, he didn’t need John, he didn’t need anyone. That was why he vanished for three years without a sign. He must have been awfully busy. John pressed fists against his thighs and leaned his forehead against the cool glass. “If things were so easy when you were alone,” he said carefully, quietly, bitterly, “why did you come back?”  
  
For a several seconds, there was silence. And silence from Sherlock was sometimes more telling than words. John counted his heartbeats while he waited for a response, no longer concerned about what was happening inside the building. When he heard an intake of breath behind him, he suddenly realized what he wanted Sherlock to say: _I came back for you_. That was it, wasn’t it? Those were the words he was waiting to hear. But Sherlock would never say that to him, and even if he did, it would only make things worse. Because what would John do then? Maybe, he thought in a wild moment, maybe he would take him back after all. Would he even have a choice?  
  
“John, I—“  
  
Sherlock faltered, and John finally turned around. But before he could so much as register the emotion in Sherlock’s eyes, two muffled gunshots sounded in the air.  
  
John whipped around in his seat, eyes back to the curtained windows, but although he imagined he could hear distant shouting, he couldn’t see a damn thing. What was going on? Should they get out of the car and help?  
  
He had his hand on the door release when he saw Greg and two officers running out of the front entrance to the building at top speed. As John popped open the side door, he tried to see if Greg was being chased, and instinctively reached behind him for the gun that wasn’t there.  
  
Just then, the sound of screeching tires brought John’s attention to a sedan that seemed to come out of nowhere. It raced from behind the building, drove up and over the pavement mere inches from where they were parked, and swerved dangerously down the mostly deserted road.  
  
“ _Shit_!” Greg cursed as he reached their vehicle, jumping into the driver’s seat and turning on the ignition. John barely had enough time to close the passenger door and buckle himself back in.  
  
“What did I tell you?” said Sherlock, crawling forward as though he planned to wrest the steering wheel from Greg’s hands. He fell backward when the car lurched forward, then was pressed against John’s side as Greg performed a tight U-turn.  
  
“Sit _down_ , seatbelt _on_ ,” Greg commanded in a voice that brooked no argument.  
  
And before John fully realized what was happening, they were in pursuit of the other vehicle, sirens wailing at a volume that made it difficult to hear his own thoughts. Greg shouted into the scanner, careening down the road at breakneck speed, and there—there was the car John had seen peeling away from the building, the beat up silver sedan. A high speed chase down dangerously narrow streets was the last thing that John had expected when he left his flat not minutes ago, but here he was, in the middle of it, and fucking Christ, it was exhilarating.  
  
Greg was still shouting directions and street names into the scanner, and John realized that there were other police cars in the pursuit, mostly trailing behind them. The sedan made another right turn, very nearly colliding with a parked vehicle, and Greg followed close behind, slowly gaining on them.  
  
“No, left!” Sherlock was yelling. He was leaning so far forward in his seat that he was practically kneeling on the floor, and he was bracing himself against the seatback in front of him. “If you turn left, you can cut them off in a quarter mile.”  
  
“Sherlock, be quiet,” said Greg, “and put your _bloody_ seatbelt on.”  
  
“Watch it!” John cried. The sedan passed through a red light, and a moment later Greg barely avoided a side collision with oncoming traffic, cursing and swerving as the other vehicle slammed to a halt.  
  
Sherlock continued to give instructions that went completely ignored, and John could sense his growing frustration. “If you take that side street to your right, you can avoid the next three red lights—” Greg zipped past the street in question, and Sherlock slammed his palm against the upholstery. “No, you moron, you’ve missed it!”  
  
Although John tried to read the street signs that sped past, he had no idea where they were—somewhere with little traffic at this time of day, thank god. He wasn’t surprised that Sherlock seemed to have the traffic signal timers of the neighborhood memorized, and he found himself getting angry that Greg wasn’t taking his suggestions seriously. Sherlock knew what he was talking about, dammit. He always did. This wasn’t the time to make a point about who was in charge, not when they could end this chase and apprehend the men if Greg would just listen.  
  
Sherlock was now crawling forward again, trying to worm his way into the front seat—it was an amazing feat of balance that he wasn’t being slammed back on his arse—but Greg once again yelled at him to sit down, then punctuated the point with another dangerous turn that left Sherlock sprawled against the back door. John instinctively shot out a hand to grab onto his arm, then let go, burned by the familiar texture of Sherlock’s coat.  
  
“I can’t _see_ anything from back here!” Sherlock complained.  
  
He began opening the passenger window, his cheek pressed against the glass as it lowered, and for a confused second John wondered if Sherlock was going to be sick. To his horror, when the window was as far down as it would go, Sherlock managed to fit his head and shoulders through the opening, swiveling his body awkwardly so he could get a view of the car that was now just ahead of them. John reached out again, grabbing a handful of coat, irrationally terrified that Sherlock would fall out, or hit his head on a passing streetlamp.  
  
What actually happened was much worse. Like sounds pulled straight out of John’s nightmare, there was the loud crack of a gun being fired at close range. And then, Sherlock cried out in pain.  
  
The sirens, the screeching tires, that crackle of the scanner at full volume all faded to the background as John’s blood turned to ice. He yanked Sherlock back into the car by his coat, banging the top of Sherlock’s head against the window frame. This _was_ his nightmare. It couldn’t be happening. Sherlock slumped back against his seat, let out a low moan, and Christ, there was blood down the side of his face; John could smell it before he even saw it, dark and gushing, smelling bizarrely of death and work all at once. John fumbled with his seatbelt, his heart racing, his breathing so fast he was making himself lightheaded. A litany of _shit, fuck, oh god no, please_ ran through his thoughts, the words unable to force their way past his frozen lips.  
  
The seatbelt finally came free, and John straddled Sherlock’s lap, ignoring the panic, and pushing through his fear. He knew what he had to do. He just needed to reach that place of focus where the personal didn’t matter. This wasn’t Sherlock dying in his arms again, like before; it was just a body. Just anatomy in need of medical attention. The swerving vehicle was just an obstacle. The words being shouted from the driver’s seat were just a distraction.  
  
John clamped onto Sherlock’s legs with his knees, and gripped his shoulder, trying not to roll off of him with the movement of the car. He turned Sherlock’s head to the side, and it stayed there, letting John examine the injury. Sherlock was silent now: no more cries of pain, just soft, shuddering breaths. The blood was still flowing, glistening on the side of Sherlock’s face, matted in his hair, and making it difficult to tell the source. So John worked carefully with his unsanitized hands, pulling back the short wisps of hair, feeling against the side of Sherlock’s face.  
  
Under John’s probing fingers, Sherlock let out a loud hiss of distress, and there, there was the wound—Sherlock’s ear. That was it. That’s all it was. The bullet had grazed his ear, and the cartilage was never going to heal quite properly, but there was no other damage as far as John could tell. The lucky bastard. The lucky, stupid, impossible bastard.  
  
“It’s just your ear,” John whispered to the bloodied organ, unsure if Sherlock could hear him. He leaned back to pull off his jacket and jumper, leaving himself in a tee shirt, then compressed the cotton against the side of Sherlock’s face. The torn up flesh needed to be cleaned, but stopping the blood flow would suffice for now. Sherlock lifted his own hand to hold the balled up cloth in place and turned his head, so that John was no longer looking at blood-soaked skin, but staring into his luminescent eyes. He felt suspended in a pocket of time between fear and relief.  
  
Then the car lurched as it sped over a pothole, and John’s surroundings came rushing back. They were still in pursuit, he was sitting on top of Sherlock who was alive, so alive, and Greg was repeating over and over again, “Is he all right? John, is he all right?”  
  
“He’s fine,” said John, finding his voice. “He’s fine. You’re fine,” he repeated more softly, not breaking eye contact. He grabbed onto Sherlock’s lapels and felt something inside of him break. “You’re fine.”  
  
Sherlock blinked a few times but said nothing. His eyes were wide, confused, almost scared, and John found he couldn’t look at them anymore. He ducked his head and leaned forward until he felt one of Sherlock’s shirt buttons pressed against his hairline. The car jerked, and Sherlock’s free arm wrapped around John’s waist, keeping him from toppling off.  
  
John took a deep breath. When he let it out, it felt like he was expelling the last of his strength. He was still holding onto Sherlock’s open coat, so tight he could feel his knuckles turning white, and all he wanted to do was bury himself in that fabric. He wanted to crawl inside of Sherlock’s chest. He didn’t care about the chase or the crime or any of it. All that mattered was pressing closer to Sherlock’s heat, the feel of Sherlock’s arm wound tight around his body, anchoring him to the moment, letting him know he was safe. They were both safe, here, together.  
  
John turned his head to the side so he could press his temple against Sherlock’s collarbone, and even though they were surrounded by a din worthy of an action film, he imagined he could hear the man’s heartbeat. He closed his eyes, suddenly realizing that this was the first time he’d actually _touched_ Sherlock since his return. A punch to the face didn’t count. John had yet to hug him, hold his hand, or feel his skin—not until now. It wasn’t a conscious decision; it was self-preservation. Because now that he was close enough to breathe in Sherlock’s clean, familiar scent, he felt his defenses crumble. The flimsy walls he didn’t even know he’d constructed came toppling down, exposing John’s wounded heart.  
  
He’d missed him. God, he’d missed him so much. John thought he would never see him again, never feel the press of his body, but here he was. Sherlock. A miracle.  
  
John wasn’t crying, his face was dry, but his shoulders were shuddering with the sudden strength of the emotion that overtook him. He loved this man with a force that shook him bodily, and he’d come so close to losing him again. Christ, he couldn’t bear to consider it. Love and desire poured out of him, flowing like the blood from Sherlock’s wound, impossible to staunch. It flooded every cell in his body. It _hurt_.  
  
Oh, but it was a good hurt. It was cathartic, and he didn’t want to let it go. He wasn’t sure how long he stayed like that, face buried in Sherlock’s chest, held close. At some point, the car slammed to a halt. A door opened and closed again, and there were sounds of shouting, the arrest finally being made. John didn’t care. He gripped harder onto Sherlock’s lapels, giving a minute shake of his head and silently begging him to stay still, and Sherlock, thank god, remained where he was. His only movement was a light scratch of fingers along John’s side, and then, so soft, the press of his mouth to John’s hair. John wasn’t crying, but he squeezed his eyelids tighter, and let out a sound that was almost a sob.  
  
Soon, John knew, the moment would be broken. They couldn’t stay like this forever. Greg would return to the car, John would be mortified, Sherlock would be confused, and Greg would have to drive them to the hospital in awkward silence. But for just a little while longer, John needed to let this out, everything that had been eating at his insides. He needed to let it go. For just a few more seconds, he wanted to remain like this: curled up in Sherlock’s lap, his insides exposed, weak and broken and in love.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks forever and always to thisprettywren and breathedout for their help. One chapter left!

It wasn’t cheating. Not really. Well, it could be emotional infidelity perhaps, but there had been nothing sexual about it, so technically it couldn’t be considered cheating. Not when they hadn’t even kissed. They barely even spoke.  
  
John found it much easier to think about the things they hadn’t done than the things they had. He didn’t want to think about pressing close to Sherlock in the back of Greg’s car—and Christ, he’d never be able to look Greg in the eye again. He didn’t want to consider how much of his pathetic heart he’d exposed. It must have been plain to every last bloody officer in the Met that he was still desperately in love with Sherlock Holmes, and it _had_ to be obvious to Sherlock by now. John never told him in words, but Sherlock was a fucking detective. He knew. He had to know.  
  
John could always claim that it was the shock of seeing Sherlock bleeding. Or that it was a very belated “welcome home.” Or simply something he needed to get out of his system so he could move on. But the excuses sounded weak, even inside his own head.  
  
The truth was that he wasn’t over Sherlock, not by a long shot, and his silent emotional outpouring in the middle of a high-speed car chase hadn’t cleansed him of those feelings. It had brought everything right up to the surface. Now John couldn’t stop thinking about it. He couldn’t make it _go away_. He felt like he was coming apart, like something was being ripped from him as he walked in the other direction, tearing him in two. He didn’t know how to fix this. He didn’t know what was he supposed to do.  
  
He tried to think about it rationally. He considered, just for a moment, what it would be like to get back together with Sherlock. If he ended it with Mary, and picked up the threads of his old life. It was tempting, he couldn’t deny it. He had romanticized those years with Sherlock to the point of fiction, and he remembered all the quiet afternoons over cups of tea, the puzzles that ended in exhilarating close calls, waking up to a violin’s melody, the shared jokes that no one else understood, the strange but incredible sex. He had spent so many nights alone, after Sherlock’s death, prepared to give up anything just to have him back.  
  
But there were also the bitter arguments, Sherlock’s emotional absence, how dangerously natural it used to feel to put his own life at risk. He couldn’t let himself forget the bad times that tempered the good. And it wouldn’t be like it once was, anyway. They might never quite trust each other again. Or John would trust too completely. He was already in too deep, desperate, on the brink of losing his sense of self. If John gave into this now, there would be no going back. Sherlock could put him through hell all over again, and John would never be able to walk away.  
  
And even if it worked out, even if things were good and they were happy and in love—one day, Sherlock would leave him again. Or get himself killed, the idiot, this time without resurrecting. And John could never survive that a second time. It would destroy him, and no amount of therapy would help.  
  
So he needed to decide. He couldn’t keep making these stupid daft mistakes that only dug him into a deeper and deeper hole. It was Mary, or Sherlock. He couldn’t have both. He tried, and he couldn’t do it. It was impossible.  
  
What was it going to be, then? The woman he had started to build a life with, or the man who could tear it all down?   
  
***  
  
John stood outside of Mary's doorstep and realized that, for the second time in three weeks, he had forgotten to call her first. And had it only been three weeks since Sherlock's return? It felt like three months, maybe more. It was dizzying to think that just a short time ago, he'd been a different person leading a different life, entirely unprepared for the upheaval about to take place.  
  
Now his life was on the cusp of changing once again. Only, this time he was making a choice; he had a plan. He’d spent too many years sitting back and accepting the things happening around him, handing over his fate to someone else. But this time he knew what he had to do, the decision making him feel light and empty. There would be no more uncertainty. He just had to do it. He brushed his fingers against the scarf that Mary had knit for him, then slipped his hand into his trouser pocket, touching the object concealed there. His chest constricted with nerves, and he took a slow, steadying breath.  
  
At that moment, Mary opened the door and John whipped his hand from his pocket, undoubtedly looking guilty.  
  
“I thought it might be you,” said Mary with an eye-crinkling smile. Even in sweat pants and a tee shirt she looked beautiful, like an idealized vision of the life he could have, the person he’d always imagined for himself. She leaned forward for a kiss. “Come on in.”  
  
John had to clear his throat as he followed her into the flat, his mouth suddenly parched. “It’s not a bad time, is it?”  
  
“Not at all. I was only catching up on some journals. Make yourself at home. I already ate dinner, but did you want to order something?”  
  
“No, not hungry.” He hadn't eaten much all day, but the needs of his stomach were currently taking second stage to everything else happening in his body: his heart pumping too much blood through his arteries too fast and the nervous energy running through his limbs like electricity, coupled with the odd feeling that his feet weren’t quite touching the ground.  
  
Mary sat down on the couch, moved a medical journal from the adjacent cushion, and beckoned for John to join her. He removed his scarf and jacket before taking the offered seat, and tried to imagine a lifetime of this: day after day, coming home, kissing Mary, reading medical journals together in the living room, asking “how was work?” When he was younger, he always imagined that would someday be his life. The tableau was a potential future that always seemed likely, but a few years distant; always something he’d have later on when he got around to it. Then he met Sherlock. And he’d forgotten what it was he used to want.  
  
Mary raised her eyebrows questioningly, and John realized he’d been staring at her in silence. God, she was gorgeous. Also smart, and strong, and caring, and a million other things he couldn’t verbalize. He would be a fool to let her slip away. Because she would inevitably slip away if he didn’t act to keep her—he saw that now, the awareness coming to him earlier that day, like a burst of lucidity in a waking dream. That was when he’d understood what he needed to do. It was so simple. And it was the right answer; it had to be. It was the opposite of everything he’d been doing wrong.  
  
He leaned closer and took her hand in both of his, staring into her dark, curious eyes.  
  
“There’s something I need to ask you.” The words came out in a rush, almost without thought, escaping his lips before he could reconsider. It wasn’t eloquent or particularly romantic, but it put him past the threshold of backing out. He still felt oddly disconnected, as though this were a scene in a film, happening to someone else, despite the blood pounding in his ears, reminding him of his own physical presence.  
  
“What is it?” asked Mary, and John could hear the slow, forced calm in her voice, see the way her shoulders drew inward. John felt a sharp pang of guilt, realizing that Mary was preparing for the worst, expecting to be hurt. But John didn’t want to hurt her, not ever again.  
  
There was a way to do this, wasn’t there? Certain words and gestures, all variations on a centuries-old script. There was nothing to it, really.  
  
John slid from the couch towards the floor, quickly, keeping his eyes on Mary, still holding her hand. His muscles tensed as he moved, and he briefly wondered if his leg would choose this exact moment to seize up and refuse to bend—he almost laughed out loud, thinking of the irony. But no, his leg cooperated fully, and John was there, kneeling on the carpet. On one knee.  
  
The position was unmistakable, and Mary’s eyes went completely wide.  
  
Now all that was left were the words. John took a deep breath and wondered if he should have rehearsed this first, but there was nothing for it now. No turning back. This was his decision, it was the right one, and he was going to go through with it.  
  
“Mary Morstan, will you marry me?”  
  
How strange to hear it in his own voice.  
  
At first, the question was met with silence. Mary blinked down at him, her lips parted, her chest slowly rising and falling. John knew he was taking her by surprise, so he waited, patiently at first. But the longer he knelt in place, the more ridiculous he began to feel.  
  
Finally, Mary licked her lips, preparing to speak, and it suddenly occurred to John that she could say no. He hadn’t really thought about that. He’d been too caught up in imagining their future together, a life twenty years down the line. But he forgot that his future hinged on this moment, on Mary’s word. She could still say no. What would he do if she did?  
  
But Mary didn’t say no. Instead, she asked, “Why now?”  
  
John frowned, not understanding. “What?”  
  
“Why now?” she quietly repeated. “Why are you proposing to me now?”  
  
Like a reflex, John’s thoughts turned to the backseat of Greg’s car, and guilt churned in his stomach, hot and nauseating. But Mary didn’t know about that, so it couldn’t be what she was asking. And anyway, it didn’t have anything to do with anything. “Because I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.” That was the right answer, wasn’t it?  
  
Mary slowly pulled her hand from John’s grasp and stood up.  
  
“Mary—” John started, but she wrapped her arms around herself and quieted him with a shake of her head.  
  
“Just—give me a moment. I have to think.” And with that, she paced away to a corner of the room.  
  
John levered himself to his feet, feeling more lost than ever, noticing the small box against his thigh and suddenly realizing that he’d completely forgotten about the ring. Shit. He should have known he’d do something wrong. But he couldn’t present it now, could he? Not until he knew her answer. And what was this, anyway? A rejection? A delayed acceptance? He felt the beginnings of anger coiling at the base of his spine, because what he’d asked was a yes or no question. He was placing the rest of his life in Mary’s hands, and she couldn’t just walk away without giving a response.  
  
Still, he waited silently until she turned around and met his eyes. She looked shaken, and John wanted to wrap his arms around her, pin her against the wall, press kisses to her neck until he forced her to accept.  
  
“I think…” said Mary, slowly and so carefully, “I think I would have said yes.”  
  
It took John’s worn out brain a few seconds to parse that sentence. “What do you mean, would have?”  
  
Mary’s frown deepened, her face etched with apology. “If you had asked me a few weeks ago. Before…well, before. I think I would have said yes.”  
  
John reeled at the statement. A few weeks ago? Marriage wasn’t even on his radar a few weeks ago, and it never occurred to him that Mary might have considered it. He wondered what would have happened if he’d already been engaged when Sherlock reentered his life. Would things have gone differently? It was impossible to imagine, and John forced himself to return to the present moment, to the implication he didn’t want to consider. “What are you saying?” he asked, low and defensive.  
  
Mary dropped her arms to her sides. “No.” Her voice and her eyes were soft, but that word itself was sharp as a shard of glass. “I’m sorry John, but no.”  
  
The rejection stung like a slap against his cheek. Fear welled up inside of him, fear of what would happen if he couldn’t keep Mary in his life, but he swallowed it down and fell back on his anger, his hurt pride. “Why not?” he asked, keeping his voice low, but laced with a threat.  
  
The question seemed to amplify Mary’s distress. “Don’t make me say it,” she begged.  
  
“Say _what_?”  
  
“You know what I’m talking about. You _know_ why I can’t marry you.”  
  
John squared his shoulders and pressed his lips together. Yes, of course John knew exactly what she was talking about, and he hated it. Even without anyone invoking his name, Sherlock stood in this room with them, looming in the midst of their conversation, and John was so tired of it. He was tired of everything always being about Sherlock. It was inescapable. He leveled his gaze and stated, “This has nothing to do with him.”  
  
“Of course it does!” Mary shouted. “It has everything to do with him. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation otherwise.”  
  
John refused to consider whether that might be true. He suddenly felt that Mary was too far away, and drifting further by the second. He took a few steps to where she stood and gripped her arm, hard enough for her to _feel_ how much he needed her, how afraid he was to let her go. “You told me he didn’t matter. You said we could work through this.”  
  
Mary shrugged her shoulder, twisting her arm out of his grasp. “And then you proposed to me. Why did you do that, John?” He watched her eyes turn glossy and wet, and then she stepped around him and calmly walked to the bathroom. He fought the urge to follow after her, hating to let her out of his sight. He didn’t understand why she was upset. He couldn’t imagine why she was being so _impossible_ when he was trying so hard to do the right thing.  
  
A minute later, Mary reemerged, tissue clutched in her hand.  
  
“I can’t marry you when you’re in love with someone else,” she said, the statement even and practiced.  
  
“I’m not—” John automatically responded, but he quickly shut his mouth. Who was he kidding? There was no point in denying what they both knew. Yes, he was in love with two people at once, because he was an unbelievable bastard, but he’d made his choice. That was what mattered, with or without marriage in the equation. He took a slow breath, and let his temper subside. “I love _you_ ,” he insisted. “But if you don’t want to get married, I understand. I just thought—but that’s fine, we can go back to the way things were. That’s fine.”  
  
He started to move closer, needing to pull her into an embrace, but Mary crossed her arms and shook her head. “No, you don’t understand. That’s it. It’s over, John.”  
  
Her words washed over him like ice water. He felt completely numb. “What?”  
  
“I thought we could get through this, but obviously we can’t. This isn’t going to work out. I’m sorry.”  
  
John couldn’t process her words. He had to have misunderstood. Panic began to rise, and John shook his head, denying what he knew Mary was telling him. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. “Mary, please don’t do this.” He took a step toward her as Mary stepped back.  
  
“John—”  
  
“Look, I’ll never speak to him again, I promise.” He realized at once how difficult it would be to cut Sherlock out of his life completely, how it would break his heart, but he’d do it for Mary. If he had to. “Whatever it takes. I don’t care about him. And we’ll forget about marriage; it’s not important. Just—don’t. Don’t do this.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Mary repeated. Her eyes were tearing again, and she looked away as she dabbed them with the balled up tissue. “I’m sorry, John. But I can’t. I’m not going to be your—” she paused, searching for the word— “your _consolation prize_. I’m not your safe house while you run away from—whatever it is you’re running away from. I don’t know how you can ask that of me.”  
  
Her assessment was too accurate, too painful, and it made John ache with shame. He opened his mouth to protest, but he had nothing he could say, no way to refute what Mary was telling him.  
  
“I remember—“ Mary dropped her head, staring at her shoes, and her lips suddenly curled into a sad smile. “I remember the day you told me your last serious relationship was with another man. You were so embarrassed to admit it. I thought it was adorable.”  
  
John remembered it as well. They’d been at some posh restaurant on a second or third date, somewhere Sherlock would have hated, and Mary had been sharing an anecdote about a previous girlfriend. Even back then, he thought she seemed too good to be true. It felt like the right time to mention Sherlock’s name, which had been a deal breaker for a few of the other women he’d recently dated.  
  
But Mary found it sweet—just one more thing that made her special. No, she hadn’t read his name in the papers, thank god. Those other conversations came later, bit by bit: explanations of the crime solving, the brush with fame, John’s brief and amusing sexual identity crisis. Sherlock’s death. By that point, they were like the stories on his blog: two steps removed, easy to catalog in hindsight, chapters with a beginning, a middle, and an end. He didn’t know, at the time, that he’d yet to reach the end.  
  
Mary raised her head and once again met John’s eyes. “You should go be with him,” she said. She did nothing to conceal what she was feeling, sadness and certainty and bitterness and resignation, openly written on her face, making her voice waver. In all their time together, John wasn’t sure he had ever seen Mary display such raw, unguarded emotion.  
  
It’s what finally made him realize that Mary meant it. He wouldn’t be with this woman for the rest of his life. The relationship was over.   
  
***  
  
John wasn’t paying attention when he arrived at home some time later. He was still reeling from the rejection, wrapped up in his thoughts, trying to accept the idea of never seeing Mary again. So he wasn’t prepared when he walked through the front door, and looked up to find himself standing face to face with Sherlock, who was wearing his coat and clearly on his way out. Sherlock’s eyes, like lasers, darted over John’s body.  
  
John froze under the scrutiny. In a flash, he knew everything that Sherlock could see: the pronounced worry lines around his face; his clenched fists; the still-clinging fibers of the scarf that he’d discarded on the way home; the outline of a ring box in his left pocket, never removed; the scuff marks and dust particles, present against one knee but not the other. John was a veritable topographic map of rejection, a study in humiliation. Sherlock could see at one glance everything that had just transpired, and it was too much to bear.  
  
Sherlock’s lips were parted, but before he could say a thing, John raised a protective hand in the air. “Don’t.”  
  
He wasn’t sure precisely what he was prohibiting. _Don’t say anything. Don’t act pleased, don’t offer condolences. Whatever you’re about to say, don’t say it._  
  
Sherlock frowned and closed his mouth again. Mary’s words echoed in John’s ears, her certainty that he would run straight into Sherlock’s arms, and resentment flared in him. She thought she knew what he wanted, but she had no idea. He didn’t want his old life back. He just wanted to be left alone. “Don’t,” he repeated, hoping that Sherlock would understand every implication of the word.  
  
 _Don’t offer. Don’t make this harder than it already is. Because if you offer, my answer will be no. No, Sherlock: it won’t work. I can’t. Don’t ask anything more of me._  
  
John squared his shoulders and turned his eyes to the staircase. He could do this. He could make it to his flat, and then figure things out from there. For now, it was one foot in front of the other. Easy. Sherlock pressed himself against the wall as John walked past, and John could feel eyes on his back up until the moment he walked through his door and closed it behind him.  
  
Safe from Sherlock’s gaze, John pressed his back against the wood and slowly slid to the floor until he was seated with his legs curled uncomfortably underneath him. He hardly dared to breathe until he heard the downstairs door click shut a few moments later, signaling Sherlock’s exit. Sherlock was gone to god knew where, and Mary was gone for good. Which meant that John was alone.  
  
But loneliness was a familiar feeling, a constant in John’s life despite the occasional interruptions. He wrapped it around his shoulders like an old friend.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is: the last chapter, and the last time you have to hear me apologize about the long wait.
> 
> Thank you once more to thisprettywren and breathedout. Between the two of them, they reassured me about the things that were working, made me fix the things that weren't, kept everyone's emotional progress in check, and caught my typos. Any writer should be lucky enough to have such great betas.
> 
> And thank you to everyone who stuck with this in WIP form. It means a lot.

The week passed sluggishly, the days coming and going without purpose like mud through an hourglass. John felt as though he were pushing through each minute in slow motion. It was exhausting. If not for work, he wasn’t sure he’d even muster up the energy to leave bed, but his job was the one thing he had left, and he wasn’t about to lose that as well.  
  
He tried not to think about Mary, or Sherlock. He tried not to think about anything, really. The only way he could face the tedious progression of time was to shut down his thoughts, and ignore the heavy weight of grief in his gut. He felt like half a person, going about his business because he had nothing better to do, but he reminded himself that getting dumped wasn’t the worst thing he’d ever endured. He figured if he just kept at it, eventually his life would feel normal again.  
  
Either that, or something would finally give, and he’d have to face how miserable he actually was.  
  
He slid his key in the lock, and ignored the thought. Tonight was not the night for self-reflection. This evening, he expected, would be like all of the others this week, like all of his evenings in the foreseeable future. He would come home to an empty flat from an uneventful day at the surgery, remove his coat, and place his keys on the kitchen table. First he would make tea. Then he would check his email, watch something mindless on the telly, and probably go to bed early. Wake up, go to work, and repeat.  
  
But he had only been home for a few minutes and he was still filling the kettle when there was a knock at the door. He nearly dropped the kettle in surprise.  
  
He prayed that it wasn’t Sherlock. He wouldn’t mind a quiet chat with Mrs. Hudson, but he wasn’t ready to face Sherlock again. He hadn’t seen the man since the day of his breakup, which made him wonder if Sherlock were avoiding him purposefully. If so, John was grateful. He had nothing to say to him. And he was fairly certain that just the sight of Sherlock’s face right now would be painful.  
  
He shuffled to the door and opened it slowly, afraid of what he’d find. Sure enough, there were Sherlock’s short, dark curls and soft lips. He was wearing a fitted blue shirt today, and his eyes were wary. John’s stomach flipped to find his former lover standing in his doorway, and he might have let a grimace play across his face.  
  
John opened the door fully, and tried his best to assume a stony expression. “What is it?”  
  
He could see Sherlock’s eyes dancing over his face and posture, before moving over his shoulder to examine the flat. John tensed his back, knowing he couldn’t hide what a shitty week he’d been having from Sherlock’s penetrating gaze, but hoping he could project that it was none of Sherlock’s business. Sherlock kept his eyes just to the left of John’s face when he spoke.  
  
“There’s a case: a woman who expects to be murdered before her wedding. Likely to be dangerous. I’m traveling there tomorrow to investigate.”  
  
John crossed his arms. “And?”  
  
Finally Sherlock met his eyes with that uncertainty he’d been carrying around since his return. “Want to come?”  
  
For a minute or two, John stared at him, processing the invitation and everything it implied. Of course he wanted to come. It was a part of him he would never be able to shut off, he realized, that desire to stand in harm’s way and watch a mystery being solved. But he couldn’t do that anymore. Why did Sherlock keep offering? Didn’t he understand that John was trying to move on, and would have to turn him down? Why make this harder on both of them?  
  
And yet, he was glad that Sherlock had come. He was grateful that Sherlock still wanted him around, even though John had treated him like shit these past few weeks, and even though he had nothing to offer on a case other than admiration and company. John kept pushing him away, and still Sherlock was offering his olive branch, and that brought on a humiliating wave of relief.  
  
Sherlock shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his eyebrows drawing a bit closer as he waited for an answer. Then he swallowed. John’s eyes slid to his pale, moving throat, and it suddenly hit him like a freight train—Christ, he _wanted_ him.  
  
He dropped his arms to his sides, staring. The emotion he’d been suppressing these past several days erupted as a wave of lust, lighting up his skin. He wanted to lick that throat, lick up into Sherlock’s mouth, then kiss his way back down his torso. He was so sick of feeling miserable and conflicted and sorry for himself. He wanted to feel something new, wanted to put his hands on Sherlock’s skin and his cock, wanted his own cock pressed into something hot and slick, wanted to be fucked and abused and taken apart until everything else slipped away. He was tired of being empty, and he ached to be filled with something, anything. He wanted Sherlock to fill him.  
  
John found himself stepping forward without giving it much thought, and his hand seemed to wrap around the back of Sherlock’s neck of its own accord. He closed the distance between their lips, and had just a moment to see Sherlock’s eyes go wide in genuine surprise before they connected, the taste of Sherlock’s mouth recalling a thousand tiny moments of love and anger and desire, combined with the unfortunate taste of his cigarettes. John stood on his toes and forced his tongue against Sherlock’s own, feeling more than hearing the answering hitch of Sherlock’s breath.  
  
At first Sherlock seemed to pull away, but a moment later he was kissing him back, eager and desperate, barely allowing enough pauses for breathing between attacks. John’s head swam with the sensation, already panicking over the foolishness of this, but it was too late to back out. And anyway, he had nothing left to lose. John was starting to get hard, his legs weak and on fire with anticipation, so he pressed up against Sherlock’s hip to let him know. Sherlock grabbed John’s arse and pulled him closer in response.  
  
Yes, of all the bad decisions he’d recently made, this was definitely the worse. But he tried not to give a shit, focusing instead on sucking at Sherlock’s lower lip. If he didn’t do something to relieve the tension building in him minute by minute, he would explode. And anyway, it was just a fuck. Just two bodies fulfilling a physical need, and if anyone understood separating the physical from the emotional, it would be Sherlock.  
  
Somehow they managed to stumble backward into the flat, and John kicked the door closed with his foot. This wasn’t romantic, it was about getting off, so there was no preamble before he reached for the buttons of Sherlock’s expensive shirt. Sherlock, predictably, pushed his hands away and began unbuttoning it himself. He always lost patience with John’s fumbling. John found himself smiling wistfully before snapping back to the moment.  
  
He stepped away in order to pull his jumper over his own head, then hesitated with the fabric bunched around his chest. He found that he didn’t want to let Sherlock out of his sight. He had to imagine pressing his fingers against Sherlock’s exposed skin before he closed his eyes, letting the haze of his desire shroud the idiocy of what they were doing. Once the jumper came off, and the shirt underneath, John looked to Sherlock and discovered that he had stopped unbuttoning halfway down, his fingers frozen in the process. Sherlock was frowning and staring, not at John’s chest, but at his face.  
  
“I don’t understand,” said Sherlock slowly.  
  
John’s heart pressed against his ribs. Someone who didn’t know Sherlock wouldn’t understand the significance of that statement, how it revealed a human side of him that so few people got to see. John suddenly wanted to explain everything: that Sherlock hadn’t done anything differently. He had simply waited a month, the time it took for John’s resolve to snap.  
  
But no, John wasn’t about to tell him that—this whole situation was shameful enough as it was. Instead of answering, John popped open the button on his jeans, making sure there was no doubt about where this was headed. “Stop analyzing and strip.”  
  
Sherlock appeared at a loss, but he took a deep breath and focused his confused look on his fingers as they flew over his shirt’s remaining buttons. He made short work of the rest of his clothing. As he uncovered his body, John allowed himself to savor the sight of his thin shoulders, the muscles of his chest, the sharp protrusion of hips over the waist of his pants which soon gave way to long, pale legs. He’d thought about this body for years, and he wanted to memorize every plane before he marked it with his touch. This might be his last chance to see it like this. And besides, staring at Sherlock’s body was easier than looking him in the eye.  
  
They were both left in their pants when John grabbed him again around the waist, burying his face against Sherlock’s neck to lick and bite, harder than he intended, because he didn’t know what to do with the tension and desire coiling under his skin. Sherlock tilted back his head, but otherwise remained frustratingly tense and still. Something more than John’s initial lust was building inside of him. It propelled him to shove his hand past Sherlock’s waistband to grab his erect cock, radiating heat. Sherlock’s quiet breathing stopped, and he canted his hips, just barely. It was enough to make John reel, and moan, and he knew that he needed Sherlock inside of him.  
  
“Upstairs,” he croaked, annoyed that lube and condoms were so far away.  
  
He practically dragged Sherlock by the wrist, looking straight ahead, trying to ignore the surprise and confusion on Sherlock’s face. Once inside his room, he spun them around so he could push Sherlock down onto his bed and crawl on top of him. His body knew exactly what to do, but his brain had almost forgotten this. He had fantasized for so long about how it used to be, but he had forgotten the exact angles of Sherlock’s torso. The taste of Sherlock’s sweat and the light hairs across his chest had faded from his memory, an unbearably sad thought. Now, with Sherlock’s limbs wrapping around him as though designed for the purpose, John couldn’t imagine ever forgetting again. He was practically shaking as he pressed another sloppy kiss to Sherlock’s mouth, the need for _more_ still building in him, intensifying every touch, making everything feel urgent and frightening.  
  
John ground his cock against Sherlock’s and whispered, “I want you to fuck me.”  
  
Sherlock rarely spoke during sex, but he squeezed his eyes shut and let out a shuddery breath in response. He rolled them over with little effort so that John was on his back, then pinned his biceps to the mattress as if to say, _don’t move_.  
  
John went still and let his brain click off. He closed his eyes as Sherlock leaned down for another kiss, taking control this time, sucking on John’s tongue with certainty, with the confidence he’d once exhibited in everything. It was like John could feel Sherlock coming alive above him. It made him want to thrash and take and melt into the sheets all at once.  
  
The kiss broke, and a moment later Sherlock’s heat was replaced by cold air washing over his skin. When John opened his eyes, he found Sherlock rifling through his side table. Of course Sherlock would remember precisely where he kept the lube. John was a man of habit, and nothing had really changed in three years: not the location of the lube, nor John’s brand of boxers, nor the unrelenting pull he felt whenever Sherlock was in the room. No, he didn’t want to think about that. He closed his eyes and thought about Sherlock’s clever tongue, his perfect arse bent over the bedside drawer, his long fingers and what they could do inside of him.  
  
A moment later there was a tug at his pants, and John lifted his hips so Sherlock could slide them off. The snap of the bottle was loud in the room, and John shuddered even before Sherlock wrapped a slick hand around his cock.  
  
“Fuck,” John moaned, the fire burning through his veins completely out of proportion with the light touch on his dick. He fisted the sheets to keep himself from reaching out blindly and desperately for Sherlock, then cracked his eyes open to see those long fingers wrapped around him. But what stole his breath was Sherlock’s gaze, which wasn’t focused on the handjob, but on John’s face, studying him intently. There was no greater aphrodisiac than Sherlock’s _attention_ , and John’s cock jerked in response.  
  
Sherlock seemed to take that as his cue. He swallowed, then started to roll John over bodily. John got the message, scrambling onto his hands and knees. He waited there, ready and impatient, but at first there was only a cautious touch to the small of his back that he couldn’t quite interpret. The touch withdrew, and for a moment there was nothing. John gritted his teeth in frustration. Then came a single finger which traced along his arse and eased inside. Finally. He tried to push back against it, but he had little leverage, and all he could do was grunt, “ _More_ ,” because this was no time for a slow build. He’d been waiting years for this.  
  
More fingers followed, already sending John to a different mindset. John knew his body well enough to know that it would ache without a bit more prep, but he wanted the slight pain with the pleasure. He wanted to overload himself with sensation, in the hope of drowning out the ache in his chest, the need for something that wasn’t quite physical.  
  
“Do it,” John said. “I’m ready.”  
  
Sherlock’s fingers paused before slipping out entirely. Two hands came to rest on John’s arse, and he nearly shook in anticipation. But just before Sherlock could press inside, before John’s brain went entirely offline, he remembered what was missing. “Wait,” he said, looking over his shoulder, even though his eager body ached in protest. “Condom.”  
  
Sherlock blinked and frowned, as though it were a strange thing to suggest. True, they had stopped using condoms in their previous life together, but that was a long time ago. Things were different now, no matter how familiar they felt.  
  
“Did—” Even on that one syllable, Sherlock’s voice was rough. He stopped to clear his throat, than continued in a tone that was softer, but strained. “Did you contract something?”  
  
Now it was John’s turn to be confused. “What? No, no of course not, but…” That wasn’t the point, was it? He wasn’t sure—he wasn’t thinking quite clearly at the moment.  
  
Sherlock tilted his head to the side. “You assume I’ve had other sexual partners?”  
  
John could only blink in response. Did Sherlock mean to say—oh god. The thought of Sherlock waiting for three years without sex, _saving_ himself for John, really shouldn’t have been such a turn on. But John couldn’t help the shiver that went through him, or the arousal that shot up his spine. The doctor in him knew not to take Sherlock as his word, but he was far from being a doctor in this moment. He was just a needy, broken man, and he still trusted Sherlock with his life. He gritted his teeth, and turned back to the mattress. “Oh, fuck. Just—go. Now.”  
  
Sherlock adjusted behind him and entered slowly. It burned as predicted, but with a cleansing fire that made everything else vanish. The room fell away until it was just John and Sherlock and nothing else, and John wasn’t even sure of his own presence. He was a ball of sensation, love, and arousal, and the only thing that convinced him he was still physically there was being impaled on Sherlock’s slick cock.  
  
The first thrust brought out a moan and a series of unconscious swears from John’s lips. Sherlock could be as silent and contained as he liked, because John was more than capable of making enough noise for the both of them. He twisted his fingers into the sheets, opening his vocal chords to turn every exhale into a grunt or a sob. When Sherlock’s hand wrapped back around his cock, giving his erection new life, John cried out, “Fuck, fuck, oh god, please.” He tried to press back and forward at once, but Sherlock was holding his hips steady with a one-handed grip that would likely bruise. John felt pinned, like a specimen being studied.  
  
He had the thought that this was completely unlike being with Mary. Not because a real cock was so very different from her dildo—although John had forgotten the heat of it, the hard and softness that a toy could never quite emulate—but because it was Sherlock, his very flesh inside of him. Not a toy at all. Not even latex to separate them, their bodies pressed together.  
   
Sherlock changed his angle, forcing John down onto his elbows. John cried _ah_ , and opened his eyes, not remembering having closed them, and not understanding why they felt damp. Even though he hated doing this sort of thing on his back, he so wished he could see Sherlock’s face in this moment, just to remind himself of who was doing this to him. “Sherlock,” John gasped against the sheets. He imagined he could hear a harsh answering exhale at his back.  
  
His orgasm was fast approaching now, much too fast. Sherlock, as though sensing it, slowed his hips, but picked up his speed on John’s cock. John groaned in protest. He didn’t want this to end. He tried to hold back, but Sherlock was relentless, urging him toward the crest. Fear suddenly clawed at John’s chest, the realization that this would soon be over, and then he would be alone again. He couldn’t go back to that. It hurt more than any physical pain, more than the sharp agony of arousal building between his legs.  
  
“Don’t,” he said, burying his head against the mattress, his voice muffled and halfway to another moan. He was so close. “Don’t leave me again. I love you, you fucking bastard.”  
  
The hand around him jerked. Lost its rhythm. Then it came back with a sharp tug at the perfect angle. John shattered, and for a blissful period, all that mattered was his body, alight and humming, the euphoria being milked from him in pulsing waves.  
  
The come down was fast. Far too fast. John wanted to hold on to his sexual haze, enjoy himself while he could, but it drained from him rapidly, leaving him exhausted and humiliated. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his forehead to the sheets. Several thrusts later, he felt Sherlock shudder and reach his own climax behind him, and John remembered that: the way Sherlock’s breath caught in his throat when he came, and then that small noise, low and choked, a hint of what might be below the surface. Like the iceberg tip of a moan. It used to mean the world to John to hear it. Just a tiny vocal admission that Sherlock could never quite hold back.  
  
Hearing it now, and imagining Sherlock’s contorted face as he released inside of him, only served to feed John’s depression. He would give everything to this man, over and over again, whether he liked to or not. And that’s all he would receive in return: some adventure, an orgasm, and if he was lucky, that tiny noise in response.  
  
Sherlock pulled out carefully, and John collapsed onto his stomach. He felt the mattress dip next to him, but he turned his head the other way, staring at the wall and trying to figure out why he had brought himself to this point. There was no going back from this, he supposed. Maybe if he had kept his damn mouth shut he could have pretended it was just a shag, but now—now he had thrown away his last line of defense. The truth was out in the open. John was in love, possibly had been since the day they first met, and it was up to Sherlock to decide what to do with that. John felt foolish and exposed.   
  
He also felt sticky; his body had been the recipient of most of their semen. He leaned over to grab a tissue from the side table, and wiped himself off as best he could. When he rolled onto his back to lob it toward the bin, he noticed that Sherlock, curled on his side, was staring at him with intent.  
  
“What?” asked John, defensive and uncomfortable under that scrutiny.  
  
Sherlock looked focused, as though trying to transmit his thoughts directly to John’s brain. But John couldn’t interpret the look in those eyes, now grey in the fading light. He couldn’t fathom what Sherlock was thinking. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know, anyway.  
  
Sherlock licked his flushed lips and breathed softly. Then he said, “It’s possible that I love you as well.”  
  
John stared, not knowing how to react to that statement. On the one hand, the word “love” in Sherlock’s voice was more than he’d ever expected. He wished he could isolate it and ignore the sentence that surrounded it, preserve it in amber and carry it around with him. But no, of course things couldn’t be that simple. Sherlock’s love was just a possibility, then, an abstract hypothetical, a potential that may or may not ever be filled. Sherlock would never feel this gnawing, unconditional love that John couldn’t escape, even when he tried. God, he’d tried so fucking hard, and here he was: once again giving everything to a man who only “possibly” loved him back. Could he really live like that? Maybe the better question was whether he could live without it. John scrubbed a hand across his face, miserable at his situation.  
  
“Fantastic,” he grumbled, too exhausted to inject much bitterness into his sarcasm. “I’m glad it’s possible.”  
  
A look of frustration passed over Sherlock’s previously uncertain face. “Well, I can’t _prove_ it,” he complained, pushing himself off of his side and sliding off the bed.  
  
John watched him pace to the far wall of the small room, and dared to wonder if he had misjudged. Maybe it was more than just “possible.” Sherlock had been away too long, and John had lost some of his ability to interpret him. In any case, Sherlock was clearly agitated, with his shoulders hunched and his eyebrows drawn. Normally Sherlock had a way of appearing naked and armored at the same time, so to see him like this—upset and almost vulnerable—was a shock. John wanted to crawl off the bed and wrap his arms around him, kiss some comfort into him. Instead, he pulled himself up to a sitting position, propped against some pillows, and brought his knees to his chest, waiting. Longing.  
  
“There’s no standardized definition of love,” said Sherlock after a moment. He sounded angry, perhaps angry at the entire concept of love, and his pale hands gestured violently in the air. “So how can anyone be expected to accurately qualify their experiences? It’s not as though measuring my own oxytocin levels would be conclusive, so all I have left is this _useless_ empirical evidence.”  
  
His voice grew and shook on the word “useless.” John remained silent, his chest aching. _It’s not that complicated_ , he wanted to say. _It’s so simple. Either you love me, or you don’t. Either you’ll stay, or you’ll leave me again. For fuck’s sake Sherlock, just tell me. Which is it?_ And yet he still wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer. Besides, would it matter either way? John would still follow after him, like a sick puppy, regardless.  
  
Eventually Sherlock’s restless movement stilled, and then he was standing nude and gorgeous, his arms crossed in front of his chest and his eyes on his feet. “Feigning my own death was supposed to be a temporary solution,” he said. “Then later, when…” His voice trailed off, and there was a brief pause. “I knew your absence would take some—some getting used to, but I didn’t—” He broke off again and frowned. He was speaking quietly now, as though talking to himself, though his tone was still angry. A handful of seconds ticked off on John’s bedside clock, and when Sherlock finally continued, he seemed to curl in on himself even further. “I’m used to working on my own. I’ve done it my entire life. I didn’t expect that being alone would be…difficult.”  
  
John had stopped breathing at this point, the weight of the moment resting on his lungs. “And was it?”  
  
Finally, Sherlock looked up, and their eyes locked. In Sherlock’s face, John could see confusion and pain, mixed with a silent plea. If he hadn’t already been in love, he was sure he would have fallen then and there.  
  
“Yes,” said Sherlock.  
  
And in the end, John discovered that was all he needed to hear. He suddenly didn’t care about declarations of love. What did those labels matter? Hearing Sherlock confess that their years apart had been as painful for him as they had been for John, and not just hearing it, but seeing it in Sherlock’s wounded eyes, sensing it in his strained voice— _that_ mattered. John had thought about forgiveness, abstractly, and the idea of rebuilding what they once had, but he hadn’t actually felt it until this moment. Now forgiveness was a warmth spreading through his chest, filling some void he hadn’t been able to name. It was still tinged with bitterness and hurt, but he understood that in time he would let that go, and then they could start over again. Somehow, that seemed okay now. It seemed almost easy. He could hardly remember what had been holding him back before.  
  
John crawled forward on his knees and held out his hand. “Come here,” he whispered.  
  
Sherlock took a step forward, still unsure, and John moved over the sheets to meet him at the edge of the bed. He placed his hands against Sherlock’s cheeks and kissed him, not urgent like before, but soft and slow. There was so much John wanted to say, so much he’d needed to say since Sherlock reentered his life, and he tried to say it now with his lips and searching tongue. Sherlock was tense as first, but soon melted into it. His fingers skittered against John’s skin, exploring as though this were their first kiss. In some ways, it felt like their first kiss. It was cautious and exploratory and long overdue. It was simultaneously so familiar, and unlike any of the kisses they’d shared before.  
  
They managed to fall back onto the bed, and pressed their mouths together until they were no longer kissing, but just lying there, breathing each other’s air. John wanted to fall asleep like this, with their lips touching, his hand curled around the back of Sherlock’s neck and Sherlock’s fingers tracing around John’s hipbone, but there was still a conversation they needed to have.  
  
John pulled back reluctantly, and tucked his head against Sherlock’s chest. “So why did you leave me?” he asked. The question had very little anger left in it. He just needed to know. And he finally felt like he was ready to hear the answer.  
  
Sherlock went rigid against him, and there was a long silence before he answered. “On the roof of St. Bart’s, Moriarty gave me a choice.” He paused, perhaps to see if John would protest, then continued after John remained silent. “My life, or—”  
  
“Or mine, yeah,” John interrupted. “I got that part.” He understood it, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. Sherlock had acted without asking, without giving John any warning or any choice. He’d lied.  
  
“Or the lives of you, Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson,” Sherlock corrected.  
  
John pulled back and his eyes went wide in shock. “ _Jesus_.” He hadn’t considered that others might have been in danger. Nausea spread through his stomach at the thought. He’d only been thinking about himself, and he felt suddenly conceited to have assumed that this was between him and Sherlock, and no one else. John would have given his _own_ life if he’d been in Sherlock’s place. And to think he’d told Greg that Sherlock’s reasons didn’t matter—shit.  
  
Sherlock continued, with his usual objective tone when recounting a past case. “I had already assumed that Moriarty would target anyone that I remotely cared about. Mycroft was the exception, having been placed under increased protection, but I didn’t know that at the time. That’s why I was forced to turn to Molly for help.”  
  
John tried to imagine what that must have been like, and then shook his head with realization. “You didn’t actually _tell_ her that, did you?”  
  
“Of course I did,” said Sherlock, clearly not seeing the problem.  
  
“Of course you did,” John repeated. He made a mental note to apologize to Molly Hooper. “Okay then, so you jumped off the roof, somehow survived, and—what? Decided that you were better off on your own?”  
  
Sherlock gave him one of his many you’re-being-an-idiot looks, which was somehow comforting, and was accompanied by soft fingers that came up to stroke John’s cheek. “You were still being watched, John. Your survival depended on mourning convincingly.”  
  
It was sick, and John closed his eyes against the bile rising in his throat. Was Sherlock saying that his grief had been captured in the sightlines of snipers? He wasn’t sure what was more upsetting: the pain he had gone through without understanding why, without consent; or the thought of his lowest moments being surveyed and analyzed by those prepared to kill him. It brought home the fact that he’d spent the last three years as a pawn in someone else’s game, without seeing the moves, without even seeing the players. It was hard to blame Sherlock, knowing there were other lives at stake. Most of his anger rested squarely on Moriarty’s corpse. But there was something he still didn’t understand.  
  
“You could have contacted me somehow. You could have, I don’t know, slipped me a note or something without them finding out. You, of all people.”  
  
Sherlock continued to stroke the side of John’s face, a warm, comforting gesture, and let out a small sigh. “You’re a terrible actor. If you knew I was alive, it would have been obvious.”  
  
That was a bullshit excuse. John wrapped a hand around Sherlock’s wrist to still it and tried to look him in the eye, though Sherlock was focused just off to the side. “Maybe at first, yeah, but I didn’t mourn you for three years. You didn’t have to lie to me for _three fucking years_.”  
  
There was a period of silence before Sherlock answered. “We would have had to meet face to face, which would have been dangerous, and nearly impossible considering I was rarely in London. And—it would have been too risky to maintain contact afterward.” John watched him press his lips together and swallow. “By the time you stopped mourning, it was easier if you continued to believe I was dead.”  
  
John’s indignation was a reflex, and he spat out, “Easier for _who_ , Sherlock? You or me?”  
  
Sherlock didn’t answer, but a shadow passed over his face, and his raised eyebrows made it clear that he hadn’t considered the question before now. It was all the response John needed, really. Sherlock’s motives for maintaining the lie had been selfish, he was right about that, but it was a selfishness born of sentiment and self-preservation. John felt his brief flare of anger dissipate like smoke.  
  
He pressed his face back against Sherlock’s chest, and curled up along the warmth of his skin. “It’s okay,” he said. “You don’t have to answer that.”  
  
Sherlock’s arm draped across his shoulder, and John felt oddly protected, nestled against  his—boyfriend? Yes, he supposed they were boyfriends again. No matter how hard he fought it, this was where he belonged; he could feel in his bones. And maybe it was the sleepiness creeping up on him, but he felt okay with that. More than okay. For the first time in the last month—maybe the last three years, but he’d examine that statement later—John felt happy.  
  
He breathed in Sherlock’s scent and frowned. “You’ll have to quit smoking again,” he said.  
  
“Easy,” Sherlock replied, and John snorted. He’d be saying something different in a week or two. Dear lord, John did not want to be around for that.  
  
“I’m not leaving my job,” he warned.  
  
“You detest full-time employment,” said Sherlock.  
  
“Doesn’t matter. I’ll need some time away from you.” He always felt like that was one of his mistakes from before. Nothing but blogging and crime solving, living out of Sherlock’s pocket—that wasn’t him. He needed his own life. Even if he also needed Sherlock to be a part of it.  
  
“Fine.”  
  
John hesitated before stating his last condition, because maybe they needed a longer period to ease into this. Then again, they had lost too much time as it was. Why wait on a decision that John was now certain about? “And you can’t keep living in that bloody awful flat,” he added.  
  
The arm around his shoulder tightened, and John felt warm breath across his temple. “Of course not.”  
  
There was surely a lot more that needed to be discussed, but this felt like a good enough start. Everything else could wait until morning. Sleep was creeping up on John, and he blinked heavily, remembering one more thing that he needed to stay awake for. “Okay, last thing I have to know,” he said, his eyes falling shut. “How the _hell_ did you survive that fall?”  
  
And then Sherlock was launching into his explanation, pride and boasting soon seeping into his tone. It was terrifying and brilliant, and John’s head swam with awe, already mentally drafting his next blog post. He might have mumbled an _incredible_ here and there. When Sherlock finished, the low rumble of his voice continued without pause into the story of dismantling one of the most elaborate crime networks in Europe. John knew he’d be asleep for the good bits, but he couldn’t wait to hear Sherlock repeat everything in the morning.  
  
Just before he finally drifted off, John realized how new this felt. Falling asleep in Sherlock’s arms, being talked to, feeling loved: that wasn’t the way things used to be. So maybe they weren’t going back to the way things were before. Maybe they were going to build something new. Something better. John liked the sound of that. And the next time Sherlock wanted to do something idiotic, John would damn well make sure that he was right there beside him.


End file.
